Dangit, you guys are too cool.

Got to the bottom of the Digger stack today, popped open the last two envelopes–and what do I find? A bag of Red Vines, and an adorable little messenger rat magnet. The messenger rat is adorning my fridge, and the Red Vines are adorning my gullet. Life is beautiful. My fans rock.

The last of the stack will go out tomorrow–then I’ve just got two more loose sketches to do for people, and I’m through the pile. (And if you’ve been sitting on your Digger vol 2 waiting for me to get through said pile, you can start sending ’em now…*grin*)

The funniest thing about this? Nobody has asked for the same character. I’ve gotten most of the cast requested, but it’s an almost eerie spread across the board. Trolls, Digger, Ganesh, the shadowchild, flaprat, Ed, Surka, a random hyena, Murai, the skins–but no duplicates! I find that bizarrely interesting. What are the odds?

Also, there’s a squirrel with her butt plopped into the window feeder. I was chasing her off, but then I got up close and personal, raised my hand to tap on the glass–and saw the nipples. My squirrel is nursing baby squirrels.

Aw, maaaaan. That’s not fair.

So Mommy squirrel gets a free pass on the feeder, because…well…she just does. Apparently the territorial range of a lactating female decreases by 50%, so I figure she needs to get her food where she can. Also, she has ear mites, and a small bald patch on her left cheekbone. This is probably less a sign of defectiveness than the basic hard knocks of bein’ a wild animal.

The eastern grey squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis is a native species, and probably doesn’t deserve the ire it gets from me, much as I love my titmice, cardinals, and Carolina chickadees, who would be at the feeder if her fuzzy butt wasn’t blocking it.

Earlier, a ragged molting Carolina wren, sans tailfeathers, looking like it had been dragged backwards through a blender, went skittering wildly on foot across the yard. I looked up in time to see a flash of green and an unsuccessful nab. Going to another window, I watched the wren chase a huge, bright green grasshopper (or katydid, bugger if I can tell) and finally pounce. It beat the unlucky bug against a stepping stone, bits of wing and carapace flying off, until it was a small green nugget, then swallowed it whole and slouched off. So that was pretty cool.