I slept last night. Cool, quiet, dark, it was lovely. So it was a rude awakening to have someone repeatedly yelling my name this morning. I was sleeping.
“Carolyn, get up! There’s a beaver on the lawn!”
Huh? Sleep-addled brain was trying to process the information. Salt water, I had never seen a beaver in the area — if a beaver, what the heck was it doing on our lawn?
I resisted the magnetic pull of the cozy bed, nice and warm contrasted against the cool morning air of the uninsulated cottage. If it was a beaver, well, seeing was believing.
I grabbed my camera as I got to the front window. A brown furry face was indeed looking up from the lawn. Beaver? I took the photo anyway. Well, tried to. There was no card in the camera. I groggily pulled a new card from my camera bag and tried again. Not so perfectly posed now, but still…an interesting stranger on our lawn.
It scuttled to the rocks and I took a few more photos. They don’t have the best vision, so moving when they look away then freezing when they look your way is typically a useful strategy.
“Cool, huh?” The fellow was so happy and proud to have presented me with such an unusual and interesting photo op that it was as if he had planned the event.
“Yep,” I said, looking around for some needed coffee. “But it’s not a beaver.”
“Ok, muskrat.”
“Nope.”
He looked at me questioningly.
“Groundhog.” Ah, there was the coffee.
Still, we’ve never seen one here in the more than 20 years I’ve been coming here and he grew up on this beach and didn’t seem familiar with the critter. It will be interesting to see if it makes a return visit. It’s possible that rocks that residents have been placing to help prevent shore erosion in recent years have made it a more attractive place of residence.
May you also have unexpected company for which it is worth being pulled out of bed. Even a nice, warm, snuggly one that beckons so sweetly…
The groundhog definitely seems to be striking a post here. What I find fascinating about this image is the a rock looming over its head looks like a stone groundhog, that big flat rock to its left looks like an owl and between them is a frog-shaped rock. I also see a number of other things in those rocks. Maybe I got up too early…
