Here are some traits of a resourceful squirrel:

• Agility: Our quick movements and knack for navigating tricky places remind us to stay agile and ready to react.

• Adaptable: We do well in different settings, showing how important it is to adjust to new situations.

• Resilience: We keep going strong even when faced with predators and tough weather, highlighting our ability to bounce back from challenges.

 

This shows how we’re clever and can change when needed, making the most of what we have. As opportunistic foragers, we grab whatever food we can find. Being adaptable is super important for managing resources because it lets us do well in different places. For instance, squirrels in the city have learned to use things like bird feeders and garbage bins for food. Ever see one of us munching on lettuce from a trash bin?

This shows how important it is to be flexible and creative when we’re looking for food. In our lives, be...

That's Furs as in animal friends, not coats or shawls. 

Glenn and I are traveling. The horses are covered always, since we have a barn manager and haven't actually had to go out ourselves and slog feed or manure for some months. But the dogs! The cats!

A good friend is coming to stay with them. She's an animal lover par excellence. 

The cats will be very unhappy, because when we're gone they're not allowed out the front door. Doesn't mean they won't try, though, and we'll have to make sure we emphasize how slippery and speedy Jackson can be. He's got that beaming-himself-out-the-door routine down. They can still go out onto the back deck - but it's not the same. No trees. No bushes to hide under. No mom or dad hovering near the door trying to coax them back in.

Jackson the potted cat.

The dogs probably won't be thrilled, either. Since Glenn has retired, the dogs have gotten used to daily trips in the truck. Doesn't matter where it goes, so long as it goes. They usually get to go...

It takes birds more than a day to migrate from one place to another. Besides having a great sense of direction, they need to rest. Some birds land. We’ve all had encounters with flocks of geese, honk honk honk, looking for a good place to spend the night (often some farmer’s recently seeded field). But there are birds who go non-stop - And you thought New York to Sydney was a long flight.

Several species have been identified as sleep-flyers; Frigatebirds, Albatrosses (get your neck out of the way!), the common Swift - which doesn’t seem so common if they can fly while asleep.

An Albatross. Photo by Pixabay

They have a clever brain that uses something called Unihemispheric sleep. One side of their brain sleeps while the other side controls flight and navigation. I can barely find my way to the grocery store sometimes using both sides of my brain, so I’m impressed.

When both sides of their brain DO fall asleep at the same time, it’s generally just a few seconds. Good thing, or ther...

Ghosts. Spirits. Who is going "I don't believe in those" or "LaLaLaLaLaLa, scares me, don't want to know!"

The spirits around us generally leave us be. They have better things to do than rattle chains, tip over chairs, and make spooky noises that have the hair on the back of our necks standing up straight.

However....sometimes they have been part of a family for a long time, and want to let their loved ones know they're okay.

A friend of mine, Leslie, and her husband lost one of their dogs not too long ago. Zena had been with them for years. She was Scott's dog, mostly.

She got sick, very sick. Their other dog, Maisie, considerably younger, took to creeping around the house. She didn't want to disturb her ill and aged sister too much.

Maisie (grey) taking care of sister Zena

As Zena's time to pass came closer, the family drew in. They loved Zena, told her what a good dog she was, how important she was to the family. It wasn't anything she hadn't heard before, but it was especia...

Go to the Library. You never know what you're going to find. Sometimes it's a little book about a big subject. Sometimes it's a fantasy. Sometimes it's both.

I just finished a book called "We'll Prescribe You Another Cat." It's gestalt with cats! I KNEW they were doing it!

We'll Prescribe You Another Cat - click the link to buy the book.

This book is one of three. I suspect they all stand on their own, because "We'll Prescribe You Another Cat", the second in the series, was easy to follow. The third one has just been published in Japan and is in the process of being translated to English.

I will tell you that when I closed the book at the end, I was in tears. I found it amazing, heartfelt, and right on in its "prescriptions."

If you like cats at all, I think you'll love this book. I'd really enjoy hearing your experience with it. Tell, tell! Am I the only one who cried?

There's a lot of fear in the good old US of A around death and dying. Then we put it on our animal friends, all that fear. What we need to do is take a lesson from them. 

They are plugged in not only to this physical world but wherever it is we go when our 3-D body stops breathing. They have no fear of death; to them it's a passage to "the next place."

If they look fearful or act fearful, it's because they feel those things from us, and they want to comfort us by hanging around. We do them a great disservice.

What we need to do is listen. Closely. Anyone can do this, but it takes a lot of presence of our own mind, to let go of our learnings and ideas and all that deep-seated stuff about life and death that we drag around with us. 

Before I got seriously into animal communication work, I was always afraid when my animals died. I would never see them again! When my cat Harvey disappeared I cried for two weeks and searched for her for a year.

She eventually came back, but not as Harv...