Swap Goodness and First Nature Walk in NE

I was in a bummer of a mood this morning. . . I probably had a sugar hangover from yesterday (cake, pie, AND cookies), I slept later than I planned, my sock sucked, and our day off (Patriot's Day) was 49 degrees and cloudy. We decided to try out our first nature walk of 2006 anyway. Granted, we did get some nature walks in Puerto Rico, but every day is a nature walk there. . . New England is quite different. It takes a long time to warm up.

We were leaving for our walk when the postman came, with a cute little box for me from the U.K. It was my swap package from Tuatara!!! Here's an overall view of what she sent me:

She indicated in her note that she was afraid the iPod cozy (with a snake embroidery!) may not fit, but it does, everso perfectly!!! The lizard is a stuffy, and the box is a fabric covered trinket box with an image of my snake, Sunny, on it. Here are some closer images:

I really love these! All three have embroidery, and the Sunny box is appliqued. Cool stuff!

She also included some sour gummy snakes. Usually I don't go in for the super-tart things, but I really like these. They're nice and chewy, too. . . chewy-tart, yum!

Then we went Nature Walking. We're the only people I know who get excited about walking through woods and fields, turning over rotted logs to see what lives beneath them. I really didn't think we'd find anything today, but ZMrK bet me a Coke that we would. Turns out, I found the first one and still owe him a Coke:

A cute, really small red backed salamander! We found five of these today, of various sizes. One was even small with a little nub of a tail. Sallies are usually the first herps we see in the year; they're tolerant of colder weather and love the dampness.

Keeping on the "red" theme, we also saw this little guy:

We weren't sure if we would see any turtles today, but sure enough, we saw this red-eared slider, and, later, four little shells on the bank of the island in the middle of the aptly-named Turtle Pond.

We saw a red squirrel, too, but didn't get a picture. We couldn't get pictures of any birds either, but we saw several robins, a pair of cardinals, a few black-capped chickadees, a goldfinch (I think . . . may have been a vireo though), and something else. . . but I don't remember what we thought it might be.

We also walked up a trail and found out we probably shouldn't have:

Oops.

We went to another pond in Belmont that usually has a lot of water fowl. We have some dry chow mein noodles and stale bread to unload. We weren't disappointed . . . we saw several Canadian geese, about 5 pairs of mallards, some sort of goose that we call "deese" (because they look like a duck/goose hybrid), and my personal favorites, wood ducks: As cute as the males are, I think the females may be even cuter, with their white eyeliner! Awwww!!!

The cuteness doesn't end when we get home. A swatch of fuzzy Target yarn made a nice headdress for Zelia:

I'm starting another sock, this time using Ann Budd's "Book of Handy Patterns" as a guide. I still need to finish writing my post about my (mis)Adventures in Sock Knitting. It was tre disappointing, but I'm over it. It just means I need to knit an extra socks. Ooooh nooooo. . . .