Day 8: A Little Bit of Fluff

So this post has nothing to do with special needs, Down syndrome, advocacy, etc., but I'm posting it anyway.  Oh, and the above photo is not mine, just stolen off the web somewhere. 

A few days ago, my husband remarked to me that he saw a very large squirrel's nest (the nest was large, not necessarily the squirrel) in the neighbor's front-yard tree.  We're in a townhouse, so the neighbor is literally right next to us and his tree overhangs our front steps a bit.  He told me he saw a squirrel (perhaps large, perhaps not, depending on your perspective and your experience with squirrels) making its way across our yard carrying a mouthful of white fluff from somewhere to fill its nest.  He couldn't imagine where the cloud-like fluffy stuff had come from, but thought it was pretty cool that the nest would be nice and cozy for the winter and that it was pretty smart of the squirrel to be so resourceful. 

I saw the nest when I came home from work that day, and imagined a sleeping animal, tummy full of the filched bird seed I put out daily for the sparrows and cardinals, curled up sweetly inside, safe and warm, while the elements swirled around in the world outside.  Yep, just lovely.

Just lovely, until yesterday.  I needed to photograph our gargantuan philodendron that I have been keeping out back on the patio since our cat was poisoned by it this summer (who knew they were poisonous!?  We'd had it for a year and a half before the silly kitty decided to take a bite out of it!).  I wanted to put it up for adoption on Craigslist before the first frost came, free to a good, pet-less home.  The patio is accessible through the basement sliding glass door to the back yard, and not a path we frequent. 

But once I set foot outside, I discovered something.  In addition to the lovely green of plants, herbs and weeds thriving after all of the rain we'd had, I saw this:

Three of the 4 chairs looked like this. 

Warm and cozy, indeed.  Sweet dreams, little squirrel.