I bought a trail camera. It’s motion-activated and I set it to take two-minute videos whenever something moves in front of it. I’ve had it on my front porch for two days, aimed at Mr. Stray’s food station. That porch is a lot busier at night than I had realized!
Mr. Stray comes to eat, and so does Woody, the feral cat who lived temporarily in my foster cat room. Dillon, a cat who lives next door, shows up for snacks, and cat food is greedily gobbled by a pair of blue jays. Not just the dry cat food, either. Those blue jays eat tuna! There are so many comings and goings at that cat food station that the memory card in the camera fills up in less than twenty-four hours. I enjoy watching the animals, and I plan to mount the camera in other places around my property to see if I can film some of the wildlife.
I’m doing lots of reading this summer. Much of it is research for a nonfiction book that I’m working on, but some is fiction. Currently I’m reading the 44 Scotland Street series by Alexander McCall Smith. Reading those novels is much like watching the films captured by my trail camera. I get small, intimate glimpses into the lives of his characters.