Skip to main content

Wildlife Part II—beyond bears

 Some unusual wildlife we have found in our yard, other than black bears:



A young king snake—originally in the pool and then placed in an empty lot across the street. They eat rattle snakes so are considered beneficial.



A legless lizard—or glass lizard because it will leave its tail behind if it has to. Originally on the cobblestones, then in the pool, and then released in the empty lot across the street. These things will eat snakes, too.

A soft-shell turtle. They can turn their necks around to bite you as you hold them by the shell. We fished it out with a skimmer net, and a kind neighbor removed it to the bay. You can eat them, but I'm not inclined.


A blue jay, which is not unusual, but this one was perched on the windshield wiper of my car. It remained there as I drove very slowly down the street and as I turned the corner, still driving very slowly to protect him/her. I was approaching a stop sign at a busy road where I could not have driven so slowly when the bird finally fell off, and to my surprise, flew away. Weird, right?


OK, no wildlife post is complete without a bear. This big guy was meandering in the driveway next door to our house recently, coming out of the woods to investigate a neighbor who was smoking freshly caught mackerel. The neighbor shewed him away simply by yelling at him, and he sauntered back into the forest. See previous post about bears actually IN our yard.

#30A #EmeraldCoast #SantaRosaBeach #FloridaPanhandle


Labels:

Comments

dive said…
Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, MY!

Thanks for a great wildlife documentary, Robyn.
4:55 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No More Mr. Nice Guy

It's good to be a nice person--to say nice things, to do nice things, to write nice things--but I declare an end to the use of the word nice. Nice is what you say when you can't think of any other adjective. Someone shows you a picture of their back yard--that's nice. Someone tells you about their afternoon adventure--that's nice. Or someone describes their childhood in great detail and sometimes with painstaking effort--that's nice. It's a lazy word, and it's non-descriptive. Nice is like mashed potatoes with noodles and chicken gravy all in a big pile on one plate with some canned corn for garnish. Everything is the same color and texture and base substance--starch (this is a favorite Amish dish). Nice is like a partly cloudy day in April when outside feels like inside, and you can't tell a difference between the lighting and the temperature of your living room and the lighting and temperature of your front yard. Nice is a glass of lukewarm water. ...
20 comments
Read more

Ish People

Tell an Ish person to show up around 9 a.m., and you'll see them somewhere around 9 a.m. Tell them to show up at 9ish, and you'll see them anywhere from 9:05 to 9:20. You have given them license to dilly dally, and who wouldn't take advantage of that? The other night at the big shindig dinner party, one of the drummers said the rehearsal the next morning would begin at 9ish. "I am an ish person," he says. Immediately the clanker goes off in my head--oh, good, I thought. I can deliver my daughter a little late. No Ish person is early, so if you say 9ish, that does not mean give or take 5, 10, 15 minutes. It's exclusively a taking phrase. Take an extra 10 minutes to drink your cup of coffee. We won't mind. We're Ish people. Sunday's rehearsal started at 2:00. Because it was conducted by the same people who conducted the Saturday rehearsal, my understanding was 2-ISH. My daughter is worse than I am about taking liberties with Ish time frames, so she d...
14 comments
Read more

Long Live Anita Bowser

You know I occasionally check my hometown newspaper's website to scan the obituaries (morbid, I know, but I'm at that age). Over this past weekend, I read the obituary of Indiana State Senator Anita Bowser . She was a noted Democrat who championed causes protecting the neediest in the state's population. She was respected on both sides of the aisle for her intelligence and plain and outspoken approach to law making. The picture on her senate page is lovely. I remember none of those things about Anita Bowser . My first year or so in college was spent at a branch of Purdue University, and in the early 80s, Anita was a political science professor. She taught my American Government class my freshman year, and she was a mess. Somewhere in my old text book, I have a sketch of her drawn on a particularly dull day in class--her hose sagged at her ankles, her slip showed at least half an inch all the way around, her hair had been slept on but not brushed, and her bright red lip stic...
18 comments
Read more