bright eyed and bushy tailed

In Lewis Carroll's magnificent story, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, one of the participants at the Mad Tea Party was a dormouse. That dormouse was very sleepy and had to be awakened on several occasions. Of course, that tea party had been going for quite some time. The Queen of Hearts heard that someone had claimed to just be killing time, and there was a trial. The Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse were all found guilty of murdering the time. The endless tea party must have interfered with the dormouse's hibernation time...

Dormice are very sleepy animals. In fact, they spend six months out of the year hibernating. If the weather doesn't get warm enough for them, they hibernate for more than half of the year. Doesn't that sound good, especially on a cold day?

Dormice are rodents and they are very, very tiny. They are not, however, mice. They have fluffy tails, like a squirrel, a much larger rodent. Squirrels are different. They don't hibernate, but they like to take long naps, especially when it's cold because squirrels don't like cold weather. 

In other words... squirrels are smart. Be like a squirrel.

Then again, squirrels dart in front of traffic, which scares drivers, who swerve to avoid hitting some maniacal zig zagging squirrel running amok in the middle of the road.

Squirrels are nuts. Don't be like a squirrel.

Well... I have to admit that I've never actually seen a dormouse. They are not native to Western New York. I guess that I will put that on my bucket list.

To do: make the acquaintance of a dormouse while it's awake.

But... speaking about bucket list items... taking wildlife photographs is one that always stays on my bucket list, mainly because there are so many different types of wildlife to be photographed. Also, the task can be challenging. Many animals are skittish and, if they see you getting ready to take their pictures, they run, despite the fact that they are really cute and ought to pose.

One way to get some good pictures of critters is to make sure that they don't see you. You could be far away from them and have a super duper amazing zoom lens or... you could be inside. When I took this collection of squirrel portraits, I was inside because... well... I don't like being cold any more than a squirrel does.