I have a home!

I've finally finally landed somewhere! Its my first apartment and I'm pretty excited about it. I have no furniture at the moment except a coffee table, so the whole place seems pretty spartan, but I do have a nicely complete kitchen so at least I can cook good things! When I finally get around to it I'll send out an e-mail with my address and so forth.

Having only been living in my duplex for a week I'm already starting to notice its idocricies. First there are the neighbor children across the street. They like to to talk to me, which I find horrifying. The problem is I like to sit on my porch and when I do here they come! I have to work on that.

Second, the neighbors across the street also have a friendly cat. I like the cat much more than the children because I can ignore it and she will just lay there quietly. Sadly she has discovered that none of my windows have screens and that she can easily get into the house by jumping through the windows. So she has decided to become my house cat. That is also sorta okay, except if the landlady ever saw her in there she's probably become suspicious of me.

Those are the two bigs oddities and there are lots of small ones, but I'm still excited because I now have a place for people to visit! Plus I got to unpack all my boxes! Whee!

In other news I've been seeing snakes galore down here! You know spring has come when everyday you see a few snakes and maybe a few turtles, and mating pairs of grebes, and wildflowers, oh and the woodpeckers are getting noisier and fighting with each other more... gotta love hormones! So, yeah lots of action down here for all (well, not for me, but ya know what I mean...).

I saw my first snake climb a tree today. I'd read that they can do it, but wow! This black racer ran away from me, hit some low branches of an shrub oak and just slithered his way up until he was about eye level with me. What a great way to avoid ground predators! I also saw my first pine snake and the dark morph of the eastern hognose. I love hognoses! They are the most amazing snake because of the crazy ways they can contort their mouth and face. When they get really agitated (primarily because you are trying to pick them up or push them out of the road) they flatten their head and make their mouths incredibley wide. They look like they have a huge white smile on their face! Of course really they are threatening to bite you, but... meh, they can't really hurt ya.

Oh, and on the mammal front, I saw my first flying squirrels! Super cute little guys. They like to build nests in old RCW cavities, which just happens to be what I was surveying most of the week. Some times they just peek out of the cavity down at me, but a couple of times one has crawled out on the tree trunk and just stared at me. It didn't really know what to do. Cute things!

In other happy news my brother is going to be here tomorrow! I dunno where he and susan are going to sleep, but I'm so excited they are coming! He even told me he was willing to go furniture shopping (probably because he would like me to find a bed/futon for him to sleep on.

That's it for me. Hope all is well!