Chicks and ducks and geese – We scurried around the county fair.

          Every variety of chicken, duck and rabbit was represented at the Sussex County Fair. Love the chickens so covered in fluffy feathers that it looks like fur!  And, during out morning visit on Tuesday, we also saw geese, sheep, alpacas – what beautiful faces they have, pigs –all sleeping, goats, cows, horses and oxen.  The 4-H clubs were much represented; many of the animals had been raised by youngsters, who proudly fed, combed and even sheered them. 

A chicken - believe it or not!

Alpacas

Sheering his sheep

                 

                There was also a quilt exhibit hanging from the ceiling of one hall. I walked around with arched neck the entire time admiring the colors here and the needlework there. I tried to quilt once, so I was also in awe, knowing the patience and precision it took to make such beautiful works of art. The fair ends on Sunday.

               

Back home we have plenty of wildlife of our own. The groundhogs—now there are two of them, one large, one small—have made an arrangement with a thieving squirrel.  Each day the squirrel climbs our pear tree, chooses a pear, takes one or two bites, and drops it to the ground. Then a groundhog comes and finishes them off. They do look cute sitting up on their haunches, munching our fruit. But thanks to those groundhogs, our garden is the worst it’s been in years. 

                And they seem to have gotten wise about the trap. Set at the garden’s entrance it only attracted a woebegone opossum.  Poor thing scrunched way back in the trap while I opened it. I let him play possum and left. He only left the trap when I was out of sight.