My Neighborhood Zoo: A Learning Exercise

I have to get up verrrrry early to walk my ChiWeenie. It takes about 55 minutes of stops and starts for her to leave her calling card at nearly every mailbox and delivering the "daily packages" on specific tracts of grass for which only she knows the formula/smell/canine reasoning. Each morning on our walk is like touring a personal neighborhood zoo sans any barriers or neatly lettered descriptions of each species. Having a dog that is part Dachshund enhances the chances that I will see camouflaged animals and those that are too small for me to notice from my height. She also flushes out of hiding birds and rodents and bugs. Some she tries to eat. I have learned a lot about many of the following from observing and/or researching them on my computer. There are the familiar and some oddities I didn't expect to see. Chee-Sy and I have seen turtles copulating next to the curb, baby snakes, frogs after a rain, lizards inside and outside my house eating bugs and trying to escape the ChiWeenie, skinks, chameleons, snails, slugs ugh making those unmistakable silvery trails, armadillos (yes in MS) usually in the morning crossing the road to check out the vegetation, roadrunners, woodpeckers beating their beaks against bark to punch a hole in an old oak tree, cardinals, hummingbirds around my feeder in the backyard, coopers hawks, buzzards, cicadas as big as my two thumbs, bumble bees, butterflies, raccoons on garbage day, chipmunks, shrews under my porch, moles or at least their above ground trails dug into my lawn, squirrels, rats & mice, rabbits in my neighbor's yard ever alert to danger and the ChiWeenie, and of course lots of dogs & cats suitable for petting. Observing from my porch or walking the dog around my neighborhood zoo is educational and the exercise helps me trim a few pounds too.