Deets and I are out after dark, rustling in the dry grasses and sniffing out bugs. before we come across an animal that piques Deets’ curiosity, she pauses with a deeply low, questioningly sweet moan. I use my headlamp to do a quick scan and come up empty. we crunch in an amble around our backyard. I’ve not entirely let my guard down when Deets puts on what I like to call her “friend face”. her manner when approaching a fellow creature with wonder rather than hunger is in her face, but her body does all of the talking. thinking it could be her “Friendcat” I let Deets creep ahead as I again click on the headlamp. now I’m confused because my cat has crept close enough to startle this thing given that I cannot find it even with a high-beam. it’s just beyond the deep grass Deets has already started to sneak into. Friendcat has a fluffy tail but I know it to be dark; I am seeing fluffy white swishing. upon next recognizing black my whole body reacts in understanding: we are—Deets mere inches, and I only feet—looking at a skunk. I gave Deets a sharp hiss to get out followed by a jolt of a tug on her leash. she gracefully high-tailed it as I tried not to move too sudden. as soon as we’d reached safety I remembered the day maybe a week ago when the outside stunk so bad I thought it would stick to my clothes. I burned so much incense that day. anywayyy new friend! rack em up.

Deets got to go off leash today. She used her freedom to terrorize our animal neighbors. In this field over the hill I mistook the vast array of holes and tunnels for a rabbit warren. It is a prairie dog town. In the past visits to prairie dog towns I have heard some impressive squeaks. I’m pretty sure their adorable call is the reasoning behind the nickname whistle pigs. I have heard no such cute whistles among our neighbors in prairie dog town. These dirt-loving little dudes, when bothered, sound a true, klaxon. Like the time we were in Indonesia and the cicadas blared suddenly, loudly, and omnipresently; all so much so that I thought an apocalypse alarm was going off. Cicadas. I don’t really mind Deets startling some prairie dogs. She’s wearing bells, they have deep tunnels, there should be no harm. She sticks her front half in these holes and thinks real hard. I thought the prairie dog noise was a bird at first. I looked toward Deets halfway deep and realized the screech I heard more softly was doing its work to get that cat gone. As she removed herself entirely, the muffled yet intense siren ceased. I happened to be looking in the right direction when 10 seconds later a slinky brown rodent popped out of the earth 50 feet away, stood roughly a foot tall on hind legs, and rang its mighty klaxon with full force. Oh, these guys are good. I hooked Deets back on the leash, and directly found our way to leaving prairie dog town.

this guy hitched a ride on my bag today. my first tarantula of migration season! the cutest best spider.