Today's Inspiration

You'd think I was Snow White.
I couldn’t resist. The weather was perfect. With my cream of wheat lunch, my water, and a book, I went into our backyard and settled in a chair. At some point--who knows how long it had been?--it occurred to me that there was a lot of noise and scurrying around going on. I glanced up from my book. My backyard teemed with birds hopping here and flying there and squirrels dashing and jumping to branches so distant, it looked like they flew. It must’ve been the pecans falling. A dash of red caught my eye. A bird, mostly grey with a red head (immediately endearing him to me) hugged a tree (that tree-hugger), knocking his beak in places, climbing up a bit more, inspecting, knocking again. He reminded me of a shopper looking for the perfect pumpkin.
And it hit me: a veritable woodpecker!
Most of the birds were shades of brown and grey, although a few had a dull orange chest. They searched behind our wood pile, amongst the trees, beneath the fire bowl. I felt for a moment transported to some cabin in the woods, and it made me want to sing (well, what doesn’t, really?).
After a while, I looked back down at my book. There, crawling over the top, was a caterpillar with a blue and green pattern on his back, fuzzies sticking up on end like he had just had a scare. A fellow booklover, I knew immediately, because he gravitated toward the words, pausing over an especially delectable one before moving on.