Anne was sitting up on the porch having a smoke today on a break from her gardening activities, while I relaxed in a lawn chair reading a book and sipping a G & T. Since I had just finished hauling a dozen bags of magical compost/topsoil/whatever to the vicinity of her new bed in the side yard, I was feeling not at all guilty about kicking back for a bit.

"John!", she stage whispered suddenly, then motioned at me to hurry up to where she stood looking down at a sheltered area in a corner of our wood-fenced property. Intrigued (and furthermore out of gin), I moseyed on over.

Well, I just about keeled over from an overdose of "Awww!" when I got a close look at this little guy, nosing around in the dead leaf and tree bark litter. Since he seemed to be going nowhere fast, I went and grabbed a camera.

Some consider opossums to be nasty, ugly creatures, and there's a case to be made for this when they get older (and bigger, and ornerier) - but as for this little fella, he looked more like a roly poly cross between a cartoon mouse and a hedgehog than anything else I could think of. I mean, come on - those eyes! Awww!

In addition, there are numerous baby birds exercising their wings in and around our (bird-friendly) back yard. The almost constant high-pitched peeping of a juvenile downy woodpecker had been keeping me company out by my lawn chair for the past hour as he attempted to extract peanuts from a nearby feeder, flashing in between visits by the much larger "baldy" jays (who are so young their head feathers haven't yet fully grown out; they look a bit like mini-vultures).

It's enough to cause an old curmudgeon to rethink his cynicism. At least until the next news cycle.