Do I ever see wild animals?
Yes! Just the other day, I was out in my hut writing in the evening, and two raccoons decided to hang out on the deck and just…watch me write. They started grooming each other, and playing with a stuffed animal toy, too, but mostly they were there to be close to where I was and just watch me. Now, these are not a pair of raccoons I have any sort of rapport with. Strangers, both ways. They just decided they wanted to chill within sight of me. So funny.
We occasionally see possums out here…birds, obviously, but I don’t know if those really count. Coyotes back in our old neighborhood, which was right at the edge of the foothills. An owl would hoot sometimes on our nighttime walks, that was always cool.
Back home, it was deer, garden snakes, water fowl like ospreys and herons, or the little tiny kind that run along the sand. Whales would wash up on the beach very rarely—I think it happened twice during my childhood. Harbor seals. Sea gulls. Crabs. Tiny green ones, the kind that had one giant claw and one smaller one; in total about half the size of your palm. Small. Lots of sea anemones and starfish in the tide pools. Wooly Bear caterpillars and bright yellow banana slugs. One afternoon, we found a giant california salamander in our yard, which was apparently super cool because they were almost extinct at the time…I think they might actually be extinct now, but we had one. Porcupines, and a couple times a bear in the neighborhood. Quail. They were cute, with their little feathers that bob on top of their heads. Squirrels. Robins. Raccoons, of course. We had it all.
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Long day! Podcasting with Josh, though it was nice that we were able to do that early, so it wasn’t a late night of recording. Work was actually quite long. I was waiting for assets to come in, and they didn’t until late. Then, they were large, so it took time to download and upload again. But, hey—I get to clock those hours, you know? Helps the time card, for sure.
Writing was good today, thank god. Got through several good scenes. Gonna take that momentum and bring it to next week. Get this thing really going. I have enough time to finish it between now and the new year. I really do. Just have to focus.
Night night.