today was the weirdest day as far as wildlife is concerned in my neighborhood. i live in a subdivision, which is full of "waterfront" lots, because we have several man-made lakes (aka retention ponds) because of the phosphate mine that used to be here and the digging that they did for it. anyway, it was definitely a "wild" day...
first off, when i let the dog out to do his "business" this morning, there were probably 50 cattle egrets sitting on the bank of the lake behind our house. luckily rocky decided to listen to me, rather than trying to make some new "friends." we see these birds all of the time, but not normally in such large numbers.
about an hour later, as i was driving nick to school, three otters ran across the road at a spot where there is a lake on each side of the road (so for them it was a straight shot from one lake to the other, just a street and a couple of sidewalks in the way). i actually pulled up on the grass on the left side of the street so we could see over the bank and take a gander...they were swimming and diving under water, looking just as you would expect otters to be, playful and having fun...kind of made me think of a few kids cutting school to go swimming.
speaking of ganders... later in the morning, once elisabeth left for the bus, thad and i left to run a couple of pressing errands and get some groceries. in the exact.same.spot. there were 5-6 geese crossing the road. two of them are gray and the rest are white. they showed up in the fall, so i'm assuming they're "snow birds". they left the same lake the otters left and were heading toward the same place where the otters entered the water. weirdest thing!
and as if that weren't strange enough, as i was still driving out to run those errands, i drove through the roundabout and was leaving our subdivision when lo and behold two mallard ducks (a male and a female) were crossing my lane and heading toward the median. they actually kind of freaked out and weren't sure what to do, so i stopped as quickly as i could so they could just go on their merry way, which they did. (i'm pretty sure they're "snow birds" too, we don't normally see ducks and geese in our neighborhood in the summer.)
on the way home from the errand/grocery run, in the same place where i saw the otters and geese, there were sandhill cranes. now that's not very unusual here because these gigantic birds walk around all the time, digging their beaks into the ground for food, leaving lovely holes in your yard as they do. they are normally seen in pairs, because they stay with one mate for life, and sometimes they have a baby or two who tag along, but it's too early in the season for babies at the moment. what was unusual about this particular sighting is that there were six sandhill cranes in one spot. i have never in my life seen this many just hanging out together, and i've lived in florida for a total of ten years (eight in our current town). it was pretty amazing.
so today was just that, amazing. seeing all of these creatures "hanging out in the 'hood"...i think God was trying to show me something, or at least trying to get me to open up my eyes a little bit more. i think they've been a bit preoccupied with other things to notice His stuff and He was doing what He could to get me to pay a bit of attention...i guess it worked, because now i'm on the lookout for some amazing things. wonder what He's got going on next? i have some ideas, but it may be much more amazing than i could ever even fathom. (thanks for the view God!)
