The Disney Animal Run

 Needless to say I was cursing the lack of a camera during this event.

 Everyone is familiar with the musical singing Disney princess trope:  animals popping up to be helpers of our heroine in her time of need, or just to be a Greek chorus of moral support.  Even people who have never seen a Disney fairy tale movie know about them. Perhaps they ventured down the Aisle of Deadly Pink in the toy department.  Few return from that dreadful place unmarked.

But rarely does one expect a Disney animal ensemble during one's morning jog. 

Mind, the animals weren't actually singing, at least not so's I could hear.   Nor were they particularly helpful or encouraging.  They were just there... strangely tame-like.  Perhaps they were taking a break from someone's else's musical in progress.

First there was the squirrel in the small play park where I do my pullups and situps.  She or he was cheekily sitting on the top of a garbage bin, watching me go to and fro from the water fountain... right next to it.  I suppose it's used to being fed, but at 6:00 in the morning?  There were other squirrels ...wising keeping a proper distance of several yards between them and the human.

When I went to get my last drink before resuming my run, this little bugger disappears inside the garbage bin.  Keep in mind this is one of those bins with a round hole in the center of a metal lid.  I peered in to see the hint of a bushy tail underneath a pizza box. 

Not quite the same can, but just as cheeky

Okayyyy.  This was probably the exact same squirrel holding a burnt out firecracker several weeks back.  Running with a rough crowd , so it is.   It'll come to a bad end, mark my words.

On I go, the birds chirping in the air.  okay, it's morning, we expect the birds to chirp.  What we don't expect is a vole to scamper from a field in front of us and back.

A vole?  Now these rodents aren't that high on the food chain and have it in their interests to avoid loud lumbering animals...like the jogger huffing and puffing up hill on the gravel path by it's field.  Why would it even go in my direction... unless it was about to burst into song?   Obviously it forgot it's lines and was so embarressed it ran off.

He just wants to SING

Then the Pièce de résistance, the big Rogers and Hammerstien finish... with a small flock of crows.  I'm nearing the house and two are on the street, one is on a power line, all cawing away.  Then they fluttered a short distance to a different power line.  A ginger cat bursts from the foliage(aidez moi?) and the crows do another chorus.     And they followed that cat across the street and up a hill.

Not so much singing as bitching

Now most people might think this could all be explained  by something silly like the cat had wandered near a tree with a nest and the crows were chasing it off.

But I know better.  It was at the end of my run, so it  had to be the big musical finish of my Disney Animal Run.