High Weirdness

Smudge

I was sound asleep this morning when the doorbell rang at 1:30 AM. My first thought was that it cannot be good and expected the police to be at the door with some bad news.

I went downstairs and looked out the windows of the front door, but no one was there.

Suddenly, a cat hopped down from the porch railing, scooted halfway down the sidewalk, and turned around to look back at me. After a second or two, it moved on.

I was not wearing my eyeglasses, so I could not identify the cat as one of our neighbors' felines, but I have a feeling it was a neighbor's cat named Smudge, who my daughter and I rescued from a tree and babysat for a few days when he was a kitten.

I felt bad for the cat because it was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit at that time with a wind chill factor down in the single digits.

But how did it ring the doorbell? The doorbell is within a cat's reach from the porch railing, but was it just dumb luck or was the cat very intelligent.

And by the way, just as I began typing this, about 15 wild turkeys just crossed our lawn on their way into the woods across the street!

Got Turkeys

Over the long Independence Day weekend, I noticed a family of turkeys feasting in our front yard. A Momma turkey, a Poppa turkey, and about ten kids (it is hard get an accurate count of the kids because they are constantly in motion).

After they finished eating, they went into the woods across the road. The woods are New Britain (CT) reservoir property and that property goes on for miles and eventually abuts Southington (CT) reservoir property that goes on for a few miles more. Needless to say, we have seen a lot of interesting wildlife enter and exit those woods.

I have seen the turkey family feasting on my front yard two more times (yesterday morning was the last time). They have likely returned to the front yard more than that, but not when anyone was watching, so who knows.