Traffic

 Here at the old Boggy Thicket we enjoy an abundance of wildlife - hundreds of birds and squirrels all day long.  And it doesn't stop when the sun goes down.

Over the summer, we had nightly visits by an opossum that Honey named Lucy.  She would show up every evening between eight and nine o'clock. Usually she would come in from the back, wander around the yard for five  or ten minutes, then leave by crawling under the front gate.  About once a week she would make the tour in reverse just to keep things interesting.

About a month ago, we started getting nightly visits from a young raccoon.  We called him/her Bandit.  Not very original, but it had a habit of climbing a few feet up a big oak tree and then peeking at us from behind the trunk.  The look on its face as it peeked around the tree made you know it was up to something mischievous if not downright nefarious.  Our suspicions were justified as it eventually knocked one of our hummingbird feeders to the ground and emptied it of nectar.

Last night we had a new visitor.  I looked up to see a skunk come around the side of the  pergola, not more than five feet from where Honey was sitting.  It either wasn't aware that we were there, or it simply didn't care.  It ambled toward the front of the yard then followed the fence line toward the south.  Once it got out of the light, I lost it entirely.  I have no idea when or how it got out of the yard.

We know there are skunks out there - our neighbor just the other side of the drainage ditch was complaining a couple weeks ago about her dogs having a run-in with a skunk - but in all our years here that was the very first skunk we have ever seen in our yard.