Tea and Dragons

I'm finally getting around to watching last week's CSI.  

Sara laughed.  Eleven seasons, and she finally laughed out loud! 

...there's something to be said for walking up the wrong side of the road just to find dried thistle blossoms so I can blow the fluff, and watch it dance ahead of me in the lowering sun.  As fun as bubbles, and it lasts longer, though it's a good deal more prickly. 

Last night, as I was leaving my parents' house in the dark, I realized that there was something perched on Mom's birdfeeder.  I took a closer look, expecting a rat, only to see...something I'd never seen before, at least in the fur, as it were.  It had a much blunter muzzle than a rat, and the bulgy eyes of a night creature; it was a neat gray on top and white on the bottom and, perhaps most strikingly, it displayed no alarm at all about our presences, even with the flashlight and the car engine.  It merely went on calmly helping itself to hulled sunflower seeds. 

Due to the lack of fear, my father theorized that it was an escaped exotic pet, but I did some quick research online, and sugar gliders are stripey, which this wasn't.  We have tentatively concluded that it was a Southern flying squirrel, which is found throughout the state but usually in forests.  Possibly hand-raised, which could explain the blasé attitude.  Or maybe we just didn't qualify as threats for some reason. 

Mom and I, at least, were delighted to find a new visitor, though she's a little put off by the fact that they eat eggs and sometimes nestlings.  I have to add, in the patois of Cute Overload, that it was anerable.  *grin*