New resident

Andrew and I were practicing out piano duet this morning when he jumped off the bench, saying, “Look, Mom!  LOOK!!!”  There was an animal in the backyard between the peonies and the picnic table.  It was good-sized, long, dark, and furry.  At first I thought it was an odd-colored cat, but it turns out it was a GROUNDHOG!  Wow!  We saw him several more times throughout the day.  Once he ran off across the driveway and into the ditch.  Another time he headed for the smokehouse, where he nosed around a rather large hole in its foundation (is he living under it?) and then sat up, posing nicely for Andrew to take his picture.

So far, I have learned that a groundhog is also called a woodchuck or whistle-pig, that it truly hibernates, and that it is an accomplished swimmer and an excellent tree climber. It also moves an average of 710 pounds of soil when digging a burrow!

How I love spring!

We are currently in the very middle of my favorite time of year!  The redbuds are in bloom, the plum trees gave their brief but stunning display, the dogwoods are lovely, and we don’t have to run the heat or the air.  What could be nicer?  Well, this afternoon I took a walk and wade down at the creek, and there, perched several feet off the ground, in a clump of dead leaves that landed in a bare-limbed twiggy little shrub during last week’s rains, was coiled some 24 inches of juvenile snake; copperhead to be exact.  He was sunning himself, and I was able to get within a foot of him.  What a treat!  I only wish I’d had my camera with me.

I have about a dozen little tomato seedlings out on the porch, right beside about a dozen little red pepper seedlings.  In fact, I should probably go bring them in for the night.  I have high hopes for these little guys.  Now I just need to find enough pots and buckets to plant them in, and some way to get them up off the ground so they’ll drain properly. O, the joys of container gardening.

The nicest thing about spring is that it keeps coming around for me to enjoy, year after year.

 

Too bad I didn’t have my camera

On yesterday morning’s walk there was a green heron standing on three square inches of dryness on a rock in the creek.  He was quite handsome standing there, but when he flew, he was dazzling.

On this morning’s walk there was a (juvenile?) great blue heron standing in (for him) knee deep water, doing what great blue herons always seem to do when they aren’t flying:  absolutely nothing while executing an excellent statue imitation.

It takes me about 35 minutes to do my full walk, and Mr. Great was standing there on my first pass over the creek.  I go over and back three times, so there would be six creek passes.  I could tell he wasn’t yet full-grown, because unlike adult GBHs, he did move a bit from time to time.  I watched him slowly swing his goose-neck around almost backwards to look at some unseen something on shore.  On the fourth pass, he took a few long-legged steps.  How elegant!  But on the fifth pass – oh, my.  I spied Mr. Great eating a striped fish!!!  It was yellow and black striped, and although I didn’t get to see him grab it out of the water, I did watch his wrestle a bit with it in his very length beak and then swallow it whole.  Wow!

On the sixth pass, he bent his knees slightly and lifted off, gliding downstream under the bridge.  Sometimes you just have to envision a memory, without the benefit of film (or an SD card).

It was NOT three beavers

A few days ago, I was privileged to watch a beaver swim under the 160 bridge!  How very fun he was to watch.

So this morning, when I approached the bridge and saw something black swimming downstream, I assumed it was my beaver friend.  However, as I got closer, I realized that there were two. . . no, three animals swimming gracefully by!  I was so excited that I even called out to a man and his son (total strangers) who were preparing to fish there, “LOOK!  There are three beavers swimming in the creek!”

But it was NOT three beavers.  It was actually a family of river otters!!!  Yes, right there in our own little creek!  There was a mom (total length including tail – about two feet?) with two babies (total lengths – about one foot?), one on top of the other, on her back!!!  She was carrying her babies as she swam along, and that’s not all:  there were two other babies swimming beside her!

She continued downstream, and as she approached the bridge, she looked up, right at me.  It was wild.  We were looking straight at each other.  I guess the floppy olive drab hat intimidated her, because she turned around, and the babies slid off her back.  All five of them smoothly twisted and turned and dived for about 15 seconds (as if they were putting on a show), and then she led them all back upstream to a spot on the far side of the creek, under an overhanging tree.  I watched the brush move as they climbed out of the water, and then I lost sight of them.

Five river otters, just for me!  WHAT a blessing from God!  I must surely be one of his most favorite kids.  = )

Pitbulls on the Porch

So, this afternoon, Jessica informs me that there are two pitbulls outside our back door.  Sigh.  As you may know Scott was seriously bitten a few weeks ago, by a Great Dane, a breed not normally known to be aggressive.  Pitbulls, on the other hand, have a pretty bad reputation.  And, as Jessica further said, “Andrew’s out petting them.”  Lovely.

Having effectively killed three goldfish in less than three weeks, I really don’t think we’re up for pets today, so I went out to try to find out if they had any identification on them.  By this time, they had migrated to the front porch (it was raining), and they smelled strongly of wet dog.  Neither had any I.D., but they were both wearing shock collars.  One female, one male, and both actually extremely friendly.

I still didn’t want them on my porch, so I came in to call animal control.  The number I have is at the actual shelter in Branson, but I don’t know what hours there are people manning that place.  It was after 4:00 PM on a Thursday.  I let it ring 15 times and got no answer.  I called back and let it ring ten times with the same result.

My next thought was to call some Taney County government office to see if they had a different number I could call.  I called the county clerk’s office – the office that normally deals with things like absentee voting, and told the lady that I had two pitbulls on my porch, that animal control wasn’t answering, and did she have any other number I could call.  She told me that I should call the health department, because animal control now falls under the health department.  She gave me a Forsyth health department number, which I called.  I explained to that lady that I had two uninvited pitbulls on my porch and that animal control wasn’t answering.

She told me I needed to call animal control in Branson and asked which number I had called.  I gave her the number and she told me that that was for the actual shelter.  (Well, yes, I knew that.)  She gave me a different number for the BRANSON health department, and told me that I would get a recording and should press #3.

I called that number, got the recording, pressed #3, and got to yet another nice lady.  I told her that two pitbulls had just appeared on my porch and that I had called animal control, but that they weren’t answering.  She told me that they were probably out (rounding up animals, I guess), but that animal control’s number should roll to their cell phones.  I told her that that might be the case, but that when I let it ring 15 times one time and ten times the next time, no one every answered.

She them said that I really didn’t need the shelter, I needed to talk to the actual animal control downstairs, and she would transfer me. Which she did.  I then got a gentleman’s voicemail, on which I left the following message:  ”This is Patty Roberts in Walnut Shade.  My number is…  I have two pitbulls on my porch.  They have no identification, but both are wearing shock collars.  One female and one male.  They seem to be quiet friendly, but as I do not want these dogs, I would like to know what can be done to remove them from my porch.  Please call me back at …. I am calling at 4:27 PM on Thursday, June 16.  Thank you.”

We shall see.

The case of the disappearing snake

We got home from piano and Wal-Mart, and as we got out of the van, Andrew said, “Look!  There’s a snake!”  Sure enough, there was a LARGE black rat snake under Jessica’s car.  I ran over to try to get a picture and as I bent down, Jessica said that he was raised up.  Sure enough, he was.  The first foot or so of his body was up off the ground in a couple of curves.  I had never seen a snake in the wild “up” like that.

Then, as we watched, he began to climb up the inside of the left front tire!  And that’s the mystery.  We couldn’t see where he went.  He wasn’t on the tire.  He didn’t fall or slither off into the grass.  He didn’t go anywhere; he just completely disappeared!  Jessica popped the hood to see if he had somehow gotten up into the engine.  No snake.  She even started the car, thinking that that would startle him into dropping back onto the ground.  No snake.  She turned the steering wheel far to one side and then later to the other to try to get us a better view, but that snake was gone.

We still don’t know where he went.

Not one, but two

Out in front of the garage today, Scott and Andrew spied a snake.  How fun!  And it wasn’t even our normal black rat snake.  It was probably about two feet long and had yellow stripes running its whole length.  It may have been an eastern garter snake.  It paused for a good photo op, and then, shortly after Jessica and Josiah arrived for the viewing, slithered around the corner and under the pile of scrap wood that Todd had left there while doing all the repair work to our windows.

As if that weren’t enough, later in the afternoon, while I was watering tomatoes and such in the side yard, Jessica hollered to me from the front porch that she had found ANOTHER snake.  I couldn’t get there fast enough to see it, but she said it was a tiny ring-necked snake that had disappeared into a small crack between the steps – the same step Andrew had so unceremoniously tripped on earlier this morning.  Only his tiny tail was still visible.

We decided that this must’ve been the Day of Snakes, and since we like snakes, we were glad.

Seen in creek THIS MORNING!

As I crossed the bridge on my first of six passes, I paused – as I have been in recent weeks – to look for my good friends, the soft-shelled turtles.  So far, this spring there have sadly been no reptiles in evidence, BUT, as I looked upstream, I saw something floating with the current toward me.

It appeared to be a log, or a piece of bark, but it didn’t spin at all with the current, so I wondered if it were some kind of a dark brown animal.  As the floater got closer, I realized that it was indeed an animal, and not just any animal.  This one had a pointed face with whiskers, and in its mouth was a bark-free stick some two feet long and maybe an inch or so in diameter.  It was a BEAVER!!!  Complete with flat tail and everything!  WOW!  It was so beautiful and sleek.

As it slipped under the bridge I waited impatiently for traffic and then ran across to try to figure out where it was going with its construction material.  Without any obvious movement, it smoothly headed toward the left bank (I guess that would be rive gauche), then turned to the right and crossed back over a riffle, exactly where you’d go if you were steering a canoe on that section of the creek.  Along the right bank there, it disappeared.  Now that I know where it lives (or at least where it works for its day job) I will surely be looking for my beaver friend again.

I was so thankful to God for letting me see it.  Had I started my walk a minute earlier or a minute later, I would have missed it.

As an added bonus, just as I lost sight of the beaver, a great blue heron flew over!

Birds of a feather

Yesterday, Jessica asked me if I’d seen the birds (no) and said she couldn’t BELIEVE I hadn’t noticed them; that there were thousands, and they kept flying over for several minutes.  I listened with interest, but since I hadn’t seen a bunch of birds, just kind of forgot about it.

Until this morning.  I was about to go out to walk.  It was 7:30, and Scott and I were both in the office.  I glanced out the window and saw LOTS of birds flying basically north.  It was quite a sight, and many of them landed in our yard.  I went on out to walk, dreading the idea of a grackle invasion.

When I was in college some 30+ years ago, at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, big flocks of grackles used to fly over and land in the trees of the college, especially in late afternoon.  They were so numerous and noisy that it was actually difficult to carry on a conversation outside when they were overhead.  Another feature of large flocks of birds is large quantities of whitewash – undesirable, to say the least.  The grackles were ugly black birds, and they were (at least slightly) startled by sudden loud noises.  We would walk around campus clapping to shoo them away. With dread, I envisioned The Return of the Collegiate Grackles as I opened the front door this morning.

But no!  As I stood on the front porch, I saw hundreds of birds walking in our yard and (I’m guessing) thousands more in the horse pasture across the road, and every single one of those birds was. . . a robin!!!

Now, tell me, what on earth are tens of thousands of robins doing descending on Walnut Shade at the same time two mornings in a row in the first week of January?!?!?  Robins are supposed to show up in spring (say, mid-March) and pull worms.  They are one of our first harbingers of spring.  Why in the name of all that is logical would they show up so early?  And why in such numbers?  Usually we have maybe six or so robins in the yard at a time, not six cubed!

I don’t even know how to go about finding out what’s with this aviary invasion, and I have no idea if they’ll arrive again tomorrow morning, but I’m really glad they’re robins and not grackles.

As an added bonus, in addition to witnessing the aggregate robin population of the northern hemisphere (and most of them stayed on the ground for some 25 minutes), while on the bridge over the creek, I also saw TWO great blue herons flying upstream at the same time!

The whole neighborhood is going to the birds.

Birds of a feather

I saw a great blue heron this morning, and those guys always make me catch my breath.  He was so majestic, so big, and just so very right in front of me as he rose over the bridge that I was stunned and joyful.

But he wasn’t the only bird I spied today.  Just past Roxanne’s house on the far side of the road, there’s a cow pasture.  It’s actually a long, skinny plot of land shoved between the highway and the creek, and since it curves along the road, the far end of it is out of sight around the horseshoe bend.  That means that sometimes there are cows in the pasture, but I can’t see them.

So as I motored along in front of the church, I saw some black lumps in the pasture, and I couldn’t figure out what they were.  They were hunched over toward the ground kind of like buffalo, but they were much too small to be buffalo.  They couldn’t be cows, either, because they were the wrong color.  The cows in that pasture are brown, and these guys were nearly black.  As I got a little closer, it dawned on me that they were birds.  Big birds.  But what kind of big birds?  The biggest birds I could think of were crows, but these were a lot larger than crows.

The mystery stymied and compelled me.  I HAD to figure out what those bird-lumps were.  To that end, I kept walking along the highway, past the end of the shoulder where I usually turn around.  I crossed to the pasture side to get a closer look, and, lo and behold, I realized that the bird-lumps were TURKEYS!  And there were FOURTEEN of them!  And they were just grazing or pecking or doing whatever fourteen turkeys do in a cow pasture on a drizzly day, so I stood and watched them for quite a while.  Indeed, had I had my phone with me, I probably would have called Bob to see if he hunts turkeys, as well as deer; although, I don’t know if it’s turkey season, and in any case, standing on the highway and shooting one to fourteen turkeys on someone else’s land is probably illegal – an, in Walnut Shade, might get one shot!

Therefore, I just watched and waited, and eventually turned around to head back, stepping sideways off the pavement and twisting my ankle as I did so.  Some five hours later, the ankle is rather uncomfortable, but it was worth it just to see fourteen turkeys in a cow pasture on Christmas Eve.