![\"07-10-10_hole-under-dead-tree\"](\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/07-10-10_hole-under-dead-tree.jpg\" "\\"07-10-10_hole-under-dead-tree\\"")
<\/p>\nSummer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Strawberry Moon<\/p>\n
Off to Fleet Farm this morning.\u00a0 But not before I pass on another Vega and Rigel adventure.<\/p>\n
Nope, neither of them escaped.\u00a0 They were out much of the night, Kate letting them in and out.\u00a0 When I got up at 7:15 or so to feed the dogs, I let them out as usual, then went downstairs for the whippets.\u00a0 The whippets ran flat out upstairs, barking, as they always do.\u00a0 However, when they went outside the big dogs were no where to be seen.<\/p>\n
They normally hang around a little bit.<\/p>\n
After feeding the whippets and putting out the food for the big dogs, they still weren’t back from what ever had captured their attention, but they were barking.\u00a0 A lot.<\/p>\n
After I finished my ramen, I set out to discover what was up.\u00a0 I worried that they were barking at the labs of the surgeon who lives diagonally across the street from us.\u00a0 His dogs come up to his property line and stop at the invisible fence.\u00a0 These kind of events incite Rigel to burrow under the fence and go investigate.<\/p>\n
Nope, not on the north facing fence.\u00a0 I still heard them, so I walked the eastern fence line.\u00a0 Still no dogs.\u00a0 I turned right at the southern edge of our fencing and headed west.\u00a0 Oh, I thought.\u00a0 They’re barking at some dog that’s loose back here.\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 When I got to where I had heard them, they were not at the fence at all, but back a ways in the woods.<\/p>\n
Vega has a tendency to lie down and bark, so I thought she may have taken advantage of the cover, laid down and decided to enjoy herself in secrecy.\u00a0 Nope, not that either.<\/p>\n
When I pushed aside the undergrowth and got to the place where it was all happening, I saw a hole in the ground that looked like a fox hole–no, not that kind, the military kind–earth mounded up around a hole.\u00a0 Vega and Rigel had dug a very large hole under a hollowed out fallen tree.\u00a0 Rigel was in the hole, her butt up in the air, her nose up in the inside the hollowed tree and barking.\u00a0 They have something up there.![\"07-10-10_vega-in-the-hole\"](\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/07-10-10_vega-in-the-hole.jpg\" "\\"07-10-10_vega-in-the-hole\\"")
<\/p>\n
I was still in my pajamas so I didn’t investigate.\u00a0 It could be a skunk, a raccoon, a cat, maybe even a groundhog.\u00a0 Don’t know.\u00a0 But the coon-hound in these dogs surfaced this morning.<\/p>\n
OK.\u00a0 So I went out with shoes and pants on, camera in hand to record this historic doggy moment.\u00a0 The first photograph shows the hole with the dogs circling, waiting to see what I would do.\u00a0 “Maybe he can get it.”\u00a0 Pant, pant. “Maybe he can get it.\u00a0 Come on, Dad!”<\/p>\n
Shortly after Vega realized I was going to be of no help, she slid back down in the hole, seeing if more loud barking would coax whatever it was outside where she could eat it.\u00a0 Surprisingly, nothing happened.<\/p>\n
Well, Dad couldn’t bend over enough to check inside the tree, but he did have a camera that could.\u00a0 So, I took this picture, which if I see it right is a shot of a baby opossum.\u00a0 I know we have opossums because I posted pictures of one that came around the Winter Solstice two years ago.\u00a0 ![\"07-10-10_yum\"](\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/07-10-10_yum.jpg\" "\\"07-10-10_yum\\"")
<\/p>\n
This shot is with the camera stuck up inside the tree from below.\u00a0 Well, I just looked at pictures of several babies:\u00a0 opossums, raccoons, woodchucks and gophers (all critters I know sharing this land with us.).\u00a0 None of them look like this.\u00a0 Maybe that’s the snout of a mother opossum?\u00a0 Or the snout of a maturing young opossum?<\/p>\n
I just massaged the photo a bit more.\u00a0 This is a young opossum staring out from the hollow tree.\u00a0 The two black spots on either side of the face are eyes, the pink is nose and, oh well, I just enhanced it and here is what I saw.<\/p>\n
![\"07-10-10_aha\"](\"http:\/\/www.ancientrails.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/07-10-10_aha-265x300.jpg\" "\\"07-10-10_aha\\"")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Strawberry Moon Off to Fleet Farm this morning.\u00a0 But not before I pass on another Vega and Rigel adventure. Nope, neither of them escaped.\u00a0 They were out much of the night, Kate letting them in and out.\u00a0 When I got up at 7:15 or so to feed the dogs, I let them out … Continue reading Vega and Rigel At Work. Again.<\/span>