The sights and sounds of the country

One of the best things about living out in the country is being able to see so many stars at night and pick out constellations.   My personal favorite is Orion because whenever it is in the sky, I can always find it.  That is thanks to an astronomy class in college taught by the famous scientist, James Van Allen (any astronomy geeks reading this will know who he is) and many trips to the planetarium as child.  

Another favorite is all the animals I get to see.  We have rabbits and a fox.  I have seen an armadillo and a skunk (my almost least favorite), frogs, toads and snakes (my absolute least favorite!!) cardinals, wrens and black tufted titmice and lots of deer.  My favorite however is our Roadrunners.  At first we only had 2 Acme and Wilcox and then one day we discovered they had a nest.  Did you know that roadrunners mate for life?  Also did you know that Roadrunners eat scorpions, snakes and other small creatures that I'm not crazy about like grasshoppers and crickets?  Anyway about a month after we found that they had a nest we saw 3 little roadrunners.  Of course I had to name them.  Now we can tell Acme and Wilcox apart because of their size but I can't tell the babies apart so never really sure which one I am seeing.  No matter I still named them and their names are Zippy, Speedy and Flash.  The other day Jay got some amazing shots of two of them.  I love to sit out on the porch to watch and listen to them all.