9.25.2006

Day One In Maine

(Don't panic, I'm not going to go through each and every day of our vacation...just certain ones.)

Waking up in Maine is a wonderful thing. The air is clean and smells like Christmas. Loons call from out on the lake and little red squirrels chatter from the tree branches. Waking up in Maine holds the promise of adventure...

As it happens, on our first morning we had a little mini-adventure helping our hostess get a couple of little brown bats off her front porch.


Go away, you bother me.


You scared the pee out of me!


I'm gonna rest here a while and then I'm gonna fly away.


While we were taking care of bat removal outside drama was unfolding indoors.

Travis, the 18 pound cat, met Minnie, the 1.6 pound "dog." Travis was not amused. (The "dog" belongs to my sister-in-law who was traveling with us.)

After breakfast Treebeard and I set out for a nice long walk. That's another great thing about Maine, it's full of places to take nice long walks.

A nearby logging road provided a trail for us to explore. It was full of Maine-ish things like moose tracks and raspberry brambles.

We found that if you look closely, you can actually find the occassional reptile in Maine. We had to look really closely to see this little fellow.

A ringneck snake. (Only the second species of snake we've observed in Maine.) My pocket knife is really, really small but it looked huge next to the snake.

We were surprised by the number of amphibians we saw this trip.

Sure, it's just a puddle in the road...


But it had at least a dozen of these frogs in it! They appeared to be bullfrogs.
(Oh, come on. You knew I'd find frogs, didn't you?)

7 comments:

Jenn said...

1.6 pound "dog."

Oh, my. Is that an adult animal?

I have a chihuahua and a chi/rat terrier, both are ten pounders and are fully 'dogs' but even I can't imagine a 22 ounce dog. Yeesh. Humans are crazy.

Anonymous said...

It's a whole new world- I can honestly say I've never seen bat pee before!! That little bat tummy sure looks soft. (Never thought I'd ever say that either!)

swamp4me said...

jenn -
Minnie is a puppy and is expected to attain an adult weight of about 4 pounds. Whopper, eh?

lynne -
Everyone needs an opportunity to see bat pee! Bats get stressed out when you hold them. You have to act quickly and handle them gently. I'm happy to report that this one recovered nicely after being measured and weighed.

R.Powers said...

These photos are great! Glad to see the gloves in the bat holding photo.

Blueberries are amazing anywhere.

Sandy Hatcher-Wallace said...

These are very nice pictures. That's the kind of dog I need...it wouldn't bother my husbands cat, because it doesn't mind any dogs smaller than her.

Anonymous said...

Beauteous froggie. But won't it get squashed by drivers? Or is this an abandoned road?

swamp4me said...

catherine -
It is an old logging road, used only by ATVs now. I imagine the frogs will be packing up and heading for where ever it is that they over-winter before too long.