A Bit of a Mystery, This One

Warmer weather has enticed my son and me to do some "field work" here in our neighborhood. On our walk down the railroad tracks behind our house, we tried to name as many different creatures as possible. We don't know all the North American birds yet, but we did manage to identify some, such as the cardinal and the chickadee. I also thought I heard a woodpecker, but my clever son was able to point directly at a crow which was making the sound! Exceptional mimics, those crows. We also correctly identified a trio of squirrels chasing each other quite raucously up and down an old oak tree.

Farther down the tracks we passed an old abandoned grain mill, where the underbrush provided cover for a number of creatures--mammals and birds--that we could not always identify. Here we also spotted a flash of blue burrowing through the fallen leaves and other debris. I cast a spell to sharpen my vision and was surprised to see a lone imp! What really intrigued me about this one was the colouration. This one had both the blue-purple colouration of the first troupe, and the mottled colouration of the second. But what really set it apart were the pinkish patches, which leads me to believe that there must be another variety of imp somewhere yet to be discovered.

Enlisting my son's help to capture the imp was the easy part--he was most enthusiastic! Finding something to contain the imp was the hard part. We eventually baited the hood of his sweatshirt with an half-eaten chocolate bar, and after two minutes of him standing as still as a six-year-old can, the imp gleefully jumped into his hood and munched on chocolate until it passed out from overindulgence. We walked quickly home, and arrived just in time, as can be seen in this picture.