Country Mouse Monday: other joys of this life

photo: Hungry Owl ProjectBesides farming, living in this paradise offers such a bounty of opportunities to get into the wild, to be around other animals. It's something I'm grateful for every single day.

A day that includes animals is always a good day.

You may remember my giddy post of a week or so ago, about how a friend was going to induct me into the ways of feeding orphan barn owls just steps from my office door. I was a smidgey nervous about the ladder-part of the deal, but psyched about everything else.

She showed me the ropes (the ladder nbd), and last week, I picked up my batch of frozen brown mice, and two days in succession, fed the owls.  Each time I climbed up and opened the hatch, the box was empty of mice, though I knew either I or another volunteer had left 8 or 9 or 10 there the evening before.

Mysteriously disappearing mice. Could be owls. Could be ???

Setting the ladder, climbing up, leaving the mice -- it just takes a minute. And when I'm doing it, there's nary an owl to be seen.  Even so, I love it. I love knowing that later on, when I'm cozy in my house a few miles away, the real action begins. 

photo: Hungry Owl ProjectAs early as 8pm and as late as almost 6am, the young owls make their appearances, in ones or twos or threes, vocal or silent, picking up their dinner. It's the most remarkable thing, really.

It always feels like such a privilege to have any opportunity to help, to interact, with the other remarkable creatures we share this planet with. 

I'm feeling super pleased this morning and can't stop looking at these images and feeling glad, my heart big with this knowledge of all that co-exists with us, other lives of purpose and meaning taking place alongside our own.

It makes everything more beautiful for me. Every single day.