Adventures in Wildlife (puppies, alpacas and turtles, oh my!)

In addition to being full of boxes and aching muscles, the last couple of weeks have been full of other interesting adjustments. For example, I have an empty drawer in my kitchen. And I am completely unpacked. An empty DRAWER. Isn't that fantastically exciting?

There has been one other notable difference in our lives in the last couple of weeks; a steep increase in critters. I have encountered more wildlife in the last 2 weeks than in the previous 7 years of my time in Oklahoma. Since moving 10 days ago, I have seen:

3 Rabbits (2 of them larger than the cousin puppy)
6 Frogs (if you know me, you know that I am petrified of frogs. So this one is hard for me. I screamed the other day and the smartest can dashing outside thinking I had, as I frequently do, fallen over for no apparent reason. But I had actually been startled by a frog.)
25 Alpacas (that's right- our new neighbors are alpacas)
3 horses
15 cows
2 woodpeckers
1 inexplicably deceased bird
1 bird determined to enter my office via a very closed window
2 neighbor cats
9 spiders (all outdoors)
2 turtles
2 adorable puppies
1 tick (someone remind me to buy some rubbing alcohol for when I meet said tick's extended family)

The puppies are actually responsible for one of the turtle sightings. They decided that they wanted to be friends with something in the yard yesterday morning, which led me to traipse across the yard in my pajamas to see what they were up to:

Turns out, they were having a close encounter of the turtle kind.

As you can imagine, the looks of betrayal when I rescued their new friend were quite adorably priceless.

The turtle, on the other hand, seemed pretty jazzed when I relocated him beyond the fence.

Or maybe not. Its sort of hard to tell with turtles.

Speaking of friends that the puppies have been making, other than each other, they also made friends with the alpacas during our last walk. The younger alpacas love to sprint to the fence, then walk with us as we continue down the road. A couple of them even raced us to the end of the fence line.

After a day of wilderness exploration... the puppies are tired. And I am tired. From all of the shrieking at the frogs, and turtle liberation schemes. They have, however, stayed awake enough to help me make some sense out of the office (that's right- the Papasan chair is BACK!).