Although there are days when I pine for city life (no take-out Chinese in two years!), there are many wonderful surprises and treats when living in the country. Recently, I have been taking my boys on a lot of walks where we identify as many animals as we can along our path. (If they would ever be quiet, they would surely hear about a dozen more than we actually note.) Naturally, horse poop (full of hay!), cat feces, cow dung, dog logs, deer droppings, and white and gray splotches of avian refuse are the biggest and most obvious hits. But we also spot empty snail shells, white herons, magpies, Charolais cattle, hawks, earthworms, spiders, flies, and ladybugs. Thanks to a library book about wild boar, we learned to look at the barbed wire fence for signs of their long, thick black hairs caught in the barbs. Foxes and cats use the same trails, leaving little bunches of their fur behind as well. It is, simply, a lot of free fun, without any worries about traffic.
