CE Wills

    Hey again, everyone. All summer we've had a basket of flowers setting on a post on our deck. They were very pretty. The other day my wife noticed four eggs in the basket. They were the size of marbles. They were tan and brown in color. At first we thought they belonged to a Carolina wren that likes to hang around. However, days and weeks went by and no bird was ever seen around them.     As the flowers drooped we decided to throw them in the woods, reasoning that the eggs had been deserted by their mother. I think we both suspected they might be snake eggs, which is a drag.     When we dumped the pot it was full of tiny ants. Ignoring them, my wife decided to break open an egg to see if her arch enemy, the snake, might be involved in a trojan horse type of plot to scare her. The egg was empty so we went back inside the house.     Today we went back out there and a baby snake was writhing about. I killed it by grinding it underfoot like a cigarette. I suppose the moral of the

    I mentioned in previous blogs, a little orphaned deer that's been hanging around. We never see him with anyone , any other deer and it's clear to me that he lost his mother.     As you know, deer are the most mild-mannered creatures. This little guy is funny-turned. He has an aggressive streak which is amusing considering his size and heritage. One day he came charging up to my wife and I as we walked in the woods. I guess being an orphan has given him an attitude. He reminds me of a little puppy that struts around until he gets smacked.     Yesterday evening I was at work and my wife was sitting on the deck. This fawn comes strolling through, nuzzling in the leaves, searching for food. He either doesn't see my wife or ignores her until she moves. Then, every time she moves, instead of running like a normal deer, large or small, he stomps his foot at her like he's warning her. It wasn't scary, just very cute. Eventually he wandered away into the forest. Just a

    Hey, everyone. It rained here yesterday, which we desperately needed. Since the ground was wet I felt that I could risk a fire in the burn pit in my back yard. The pit is made of concrete and mountain stone but is open on one side. It helps prevent sparks from catching the woods on fire. In this area your carelessness could have far-reaching effects.     I got a nice fire going before dark and was sitting in a lawn chair watching the flames as the sun went down. My wife was at work so I was alone. I had some champagne and then switched over to beer which was not smart. Anyway, I was listening to my I-Pod and keeping an eagle eye out for cougars. Other than the immediate circle of firelight there was that awesome darkness peculiar to the woods. There was a rumble of thunder to the north and just a bit of a cool breeze, which was nice.     I had my I-Pod on shuffle and a song from the sixties came on. The song is titled Laurie, Strange Things Happen In This World . The theme of the

    Hey, everyone. Last week we were walking in the woods here at home and made a sobering discovery. Underneath a white pine tree we found a large bunch of feathers on the ground. Many of them was of the very soft, downy variety peculiar to baby birds. With no desire to sound like CSI, careful examination of the site led me to believe that an owl's nest had been raided by a mountain lion or a bobcat. There was not a shred of meat or bone left which is typical of the voracious mountain lions. The preceding post titled A Cry In the Woods, which mentioned the baby owls, comes to mind. I guess the babies should have been a little quieter.     That's the way things work in the woods. You'll find something or hear something that you wonder about and within a few days the answer will pop up. If you're attentive enough to look, that is.     Well, I wish I had the music for that Elton John song about the circle of life. I'd play it and think about the little owls. Adios f

    A few years ago my wife and I went to Nashville. We wanted to take the tour that they give at the Grand Ole Opry. You'd never know what the building was from the outside. It's not all that huge and the exterior is all wood, very dark. The wood is almost black.     Inside, the first thing that struck me was the seating. It was church pews with mauve padding and reminded me very much of a church I had been in, down in Louisiana. There was a little red barn on the stage. I understand that during the recent floods, this stage was covered by the water from the Cumberland River. I would have thought Mother Nature would have been more of a country music fan than that.     Our group stood on the stage and sang a song. The acoustics were quite good. I asked the lady if Elvis had ever sung at the Opry and she told me a funny story. A man at the Opry had told the young rocker not to quit his day job because he would not find much success. Consequently, after Elvis made it big, he ne

Hey everyone. We are finally starting to get a little rain here in the southern U.S. I'm very grateful for that as the entire region is groaning under the burden of the lack of rain. It's raining a bit as I type this, actually. With the rain seems to come more animal sightings. Two nights ago, at 3AM, my wife looked out the glass doors and saw a huge owl sitting on one of the deck posts. The rascal was several feet tall and just sat there and stared at her a moment before flying away. It's a bit of a surprise that he would sit there at night because we keep the lights on out back due to mountain lions and things that go bump in the night. He was probably waiting on a mouse or a rabbit. There has been a rabbit hanging about for several weeks. I would say his days are numbered. It is an awesome thing to see an animal as large as an owl swooping in and out between the trees in a forest. I can well imagine how terrifying they must be to a rabbit.     Once we were overrun with

   I was thinking about my buddy, Walter. He's the hero of my book Walter, the Lonesome Turtle. I wrote the story on my I-pad with the Pages app which is similar to Microsoft Word. I put a lot of pictures in it and a video of a squirrel eating acorns. Actually, I wrote the story around the pictures, just goofing around. Pages is cool in that you can turn the pics at odd angles and do text wrapping, lots of stuff. At any rate, I felt like it would more fully utilize the possibilities of digital books. Of course it had to be changed to a Word document before I could publish it to Smashwords. Then I got into a real problem trying to get it published because the pictures and videos didn't translate into the new format right. I worked my butt off for about a month and finally gave up on the pictures being in it. Walter himself, who had hung around for six months in a hole out back, must have got aggravated because he left. Kind of miss him, actually.     I have several things goin