Yesterday, as our daughter and I cut the first morels of the year, she asked why we could not teach Lady to look for them.
``Give them to her to smell,'' she suggested.
I suspect we could actually teach our family mutt to hunt morels, but she would be such a pain in the ass when you would go to cut them that I would never teach her. I explained that to my daughter (in slightly different language) and she (my daughter) agreed with my assessment of what Lady would do.
I do like the idea of a morel-hunting mutt in America along the lines of a truffle-hunting pig in France.
But I will say this morning, at one of my secondary spots for morels, when I found none, I allowed Lady to snift around some just to see if she would happen to find any. She did not.
All the same, we found enough last evening that I had a nice side dish of batter-dipped morels with my eggs this morning.
This is the week spring truly arrives, almost always is, and this week certainly looks to be all that change.
More rain overnight. I found night crawlers and earthworms on the roads and streets as Lady and I rambled off, but not as many as I would have expected. Nor were as many robins as I expected
Lady stalked a rabbit that lollygagged around an alley.
The Canada geese were acting so protective as we crossed the side rail separating town from the wildness of the town pond that I knew more goslings had hatched out.
I counted at least three families of goslings on the south old clay pit. But I also saw one goose still on a nest.
A wood duck whistled off from the south pit, but I did not see it. What I am pretty sure was a green heron squawked off from the south pit, too.
We had much more rain than I thought. The east side of the south pit had much water laying around and the ditch to the east was bank full.
Back in my young landscaping days, I would have went to something like ``Splashy Walking,'' by Muddy Waters Poole.
Oh come now, you knew I would go to Muddy Waters. In this case, a very young Muddy Waters. Thought this was the apt song with my finding morels.
``Mojo working for morels.'' Can I go there? Oh, I just did.
Back in town, a Eurasian collared-dove loosed its raspy call down the alley by the fire hall.
Near home, a gray squirrel bolted across the street from the low feeders by our neighbors.
In our front yard, our dogwood is at its pink peak.
I sloshed through the backyard and checked the rain gauge: 1.6 inches.
