Just Moments Ago

Tonight, when Mark came in from taking Poppy on her last walk of the night, he began calling my name. "What?" I yelled back. "Look out front," he answered, "there are deer in our yard." I ran through the darkened living room and looked out the window. Four deer were standing around our maple tree, eating the evergreen vine that winds up its trunk. I've seen deer quite often in the park down the street and just a couple of days ago, I saw evidence that they had been in our yard - footprints in the snow, but this was the first time I had actually seen any in the yard. After watching them for a minute or two, I ran back to my bedroom to get my camera. By the time I got back to the front window, several of the deer had moved on. I tried taking pictures through the glass, but in the dark, my camera wouldn't focus. Finally I went out on the front porch and managed to get this one shot. It's grainy and fuzzy but I managed to capture a memory of the visitation.

Our day started with a severe thunderstorm. Temperatures were in the fifties when I got up to take Poppy out. Shortly after we got back from our short walk, the sky let loose with torrential rains, it looked like the footage you see on TV of a hurricane. It was coming down so hard, that you could barely see our neighbor's house across the street. Listening to the radio, we learned that there was a tornado watch for one of the neighboring counties. That's VERY unusual for January. I said to Mark, "Welcome to the world of extreme climate change." After about an hour, the storm moved on, but it continued to be windy for most of the day. The wind brought in colder temperatures. In a matter of just a few hours, it dropped over twenty degrees.