Pretty in Pink at Bald Eagle State Park

We are very fortunate in central Pennsylvania. There are many beautiful outdoor spots to visit within a short drive of where we live. The state parks' facilities are closed, but the trails are open. So my husband and I headed for Bald Eagle State Park in the afternoon.

Above you may see a lovely pink tree that is blooming its fool head off by the Frog Pond, which you can get to via the Butterfly Trail. There are amphibians carrying on in the pond, and I saw some huge newts along the edges. The reflections were glorious. What a fine place for a hike!

In completely unrelated news, my husband recently pointed out to me that we have mice living in our shed. (Mice? Say it isn't so!) In the olden days, I used to trap the mice out with regular mouse traps.

But in my older age, I have grown weary of killing. More than a year ago, I bought a Havahart mouse trap online from Amazon for about $17. T. Tiger inspected it and that was captured in a blip. However, I never got around to actually SETTING the trap.

So I finally decided to get the trap out. I gathered from the comments on Amazon that there is a bit of a trick to setting it. So I went back and read the comments, and I found a short video and watched it.

Then we experimented with the trap by sending T. Tiger inside, and "catching" and "releasing" him several times. You may see a picture of T. Tiger "behind bars" in the extra photos area. I told him to pretend that he was REALLY in jail, and to act the part. Look at that sad little face. Great acting job, T. Tiger!

The trap appears to be working just fine, and so I removed the tiger with very little fanfare, and I took the trap out to the shed and set it. No, as of this posting, we have not caught anything yet, but I'm sure we will.

My husband will be my Transporter, taking the mice, via bicycle, up the hill to the gamelands to release them. I can only imagine the excitement of each mouse's first bike ride!

I have two songs to go with this posting. One is for the tree: the Psychedelic Furs, with Pretty in Pink. The other is for the Tiger in the hoosegow, in the extras: Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, with Busted (the song begins around 1:30).