* There are a ton of rabbits here. I don’t know if it’s an unusual amount or not, because last summer I didn’t go walking in the evening nearly as often as I do now. But every night we seem to run into at least a couple of little brown bunny rabbits with their little white cottontail butts, and they are just the cutest thing ever. I’m sure I would find them a lot less cute if I had a vegetable garden, but since our yard is just one big weed-fest, I don’t mind them at all. I just hope the mama bunnies keep their babies out of our yard, so the cats don’t get them.

* We also have a ton of slugs, which never cease to gross me out.

* One of our neighbors apparently owns a helicopter. I guess it’s a hobby, and he certainly has the acreage to store it. It’s just… huh. I’ve lived here for two and a half years. How did I never notice that before?

* If there’s a cow with no udders, that’d be a bull, right? Even though it doesn’t have horns either? There are two of them in a field right near our house, and anytime we pass farm animals, I always do the “Hey Catie, look at the (fill in the name of appropriate farm animal).” But I have no idea what to call those things. I always say cows, even though I’m pretty sure it’s the wrong name.

* Another night we walked past a field of horses, where there were like four horses in one pasture, and one horse in a separate fenced-off area (all on the same farm). I thought that was weird, but whatever. Then I realized that the one horse that had been separated from the others was… um… aroused. To put it mildly. I’m pretty sure the other horses were girls, so I guess I understand why the (very clearly) boy horse was separated from them. But I went from doing my usual “Hey Catie, look at the horsies,” to “Oh dear god, run away! Don’t look at the horsies! Eyes straight ahead, missy!!!” I know she’s way too young to understand, I just don’t want to put those kind of scary images in her subconscience or anything.

* A couple of nights ago, we ran into a kid who was clearly the opposite of the firecracker punks. We have a lot of gravel roads in our neighborhood, so it’s pretty ideal for those all-terrain vehicles. I heard this kid’s four-wheeler about five minutes before I saw him because it was so loud. When he saw us, he stopped, turned off the ignition, and walked his four-wheeler past us. Wow. How polite is that? Cate was right on the verge of dozing off in the backpack carrier, so as he passed us, I thanked him for not startling her. He kind of did the “aw, shucks” nod and kept going. It’s nice to know there are some teenagers in the world whose mamas brought them up right.

* Last night we passed one of our neighbors, who warned me that she had just passed a coyote, and her description of its location was right across the street from our driveway. Great! I went into hyper-mommy protective mode, holding onto Cate’s legs in the Baby Bjorn (no nipping at my baby’s toes, thank you), looking suspiciously at every shrub and hedge along the way, and getting mentally prepared to scream, yell and possibly kick the coyote if it came toward us. I don’t know how bold the coyotes are around here, but I’ve heard stories of them being totally unafraid of people, so I was trying to psych myself up for anything. I also wanted to get home as fast as possible to make sure all of our kitties were inside so they wouldn’t end up a coyote snack. We made it home and never saw the coyote, although I did hear some of the neighbors’ dogs going berserk (barking like crazy), so I think I know which direction he went. Add that to the list of reasons I want to move.