September summer

That's a photo of 2nd dog Ethel Mae, hunting a wild stick.

It's a beautiful, sunny, crisp, almost-autumn day, currently 19°, and expected to top off at 21°.

That's Celsius. In Fahrenheit, it would be 66° now and 70° later. I'm comfortable using Celsius because brewing calculations are much easier in metric than in English.

A few months ago, little Ethel was baying at two wild foxes she had cornered in the back yard at 5am. She probably awakened several disgruntled neighbors, in the 10 minutes it took for me to stumble out of bed and corral her.

To the left is a photo, taken in May, of Emma Dog and Ethel Mae treeing a frightened possum. I lured away the two dogs with promises of dog treats, and the possum slowly climbed down and ambled away.

This is a very suburban area. But wildlife seems to be moving back in, as exurbia sprawls further into its habitat.

Yesterday morning as I was driving to work, I barely avoided striking a pair of deer less than a mile from my house.