Nature Gossip

Around our neighborhood, in the evenings, it is common for the neighbors to talk about what's going on nature wise. It's very active. So i thought i'd share the update. Six beavers have been caught in the last two weeks, a couple of which were living in our yard in a tunnel...their roof caved in and that's how i found out about it. Don't worry, they don't get killed, they are released in a better place.

The gosslings (baby geese) are alive! All six of them too! They have came back to our back yard but are being threatened by six new bachelor geese which all of us in the neighborhood don't like. These guys are amusing though - arrogant and bully's that they are. For instance, they fight with the father of the babies and make a racket. They walk the neighborhood like they own it. Just the other day i was trying to drive out and all six of them had me blocked. Equal distance from one another lined the width of the street. I honked and they still wouldn't move. I thought about running them over - they really do harass the rest of the wildlife here and have kind of taken over the neighborhood. They have kicked the mallards and other ducks out of the lake. Anyhow... the amusing thing they do is fly down the street, low and together along the length of the street which is quite funny to see. Then splash into the water. It's kind surreal.

The white duck that was here - we got the juice on him the other night. He's been missing since we moved in. Story has it that someone dumped him off here and he was a bit of a wimp and didn't know how to fly and stuff. He was big too. Well, i guess story has it that the couple he took up with...the two mallards out here became a family of three. The two little guys taught the big white one how to fly and they cruised the lake together then one day he just came up missing, like a week after we moved in. Gossip of the neighborhood is that he just flew off one day after they taught him how to fly. Typical....lol. Just kidding. But really, some people around here are heartbroken over it. I've been told not to get attached to any of them because the liklihood of them surviving (babies) or sticking around (big white one) will break my heart.

Now the turtles here are crazy big. We have some small ones but we also have some that are a foot and a half to two feet long. They are HUGE. We see them from our window. The association is trying to get rid of them too cause they just get too big.

The birds are awesome. My favorite is the one that spends most his mornings and evenings in our yard. A beautiful red robin. Bluejays were always my favorite and it's even how my favorite became blue but the neighborhood bluejay hangs out in someone elses yard...and the hawk does too. The red robin is just beautiful and his songs aren't half bad. The woodpecker is annoying...he pecks at our trees and isn't half as cute as Woody the Woodpecker. He also attacks our deck trying to get at the carpenter bee eggs (we almost have the bee situation under control - for this year anyhow). We'll see though because the eggs are to hatch in about 3-5 weeks so we'll know for sure.

Hmmm...i'm sure there's more to the wildlife situation but that covers the gossip for this week. Oh, and apparently now there are some muskrats (yuck) and racoons (i think that's who got into our trash a few weeks ago).

Flower wise and garden wise, it's just getting so beautiful around here. Everything is bloomed now, the trees are full of leaves, flowers everywhere, and all my veggies, corriander and flowers are up. I was happy to find today 8 strawberry's had come in. I thought the plants in the backyard were strawberry's and they are. Yum, can't wait till they are ripe.

That's our exciting life here. I sometimes can't believe we are still in city limits and have all this in our backyard. We were so blessed to find such a great place to live. It'll be a fun place for kids once we have them...

Oh, i should talk about the neighbors too. Met some more. One lady was very kind. She saw i needed something and invited me over to her house and gave me a box of stuff that i needed. So sweet. All our neighbors are great. Very active neighborhood. Our neighbors are out of town though - both of them. One set in Africa and the other in Dominican Republic. Oh! And this was shocking to me. One of our neighbors gave them their keys to their house for safekeeping. Okay, now we are the newest to the neighborhood and Muslim (not a popular thing to be here as the one neighbor who gave me the stuff said) - they could have given them to people they knew longer but they gave them to us! How trusting and awesome is that?

Two people in the neighborhood have me amused though. The Jehovah's Witnesses and then another set of neighbors who asked their Baptist Church to pay us a visit. DH says they just go to new residents...i say he was sent to us. The two suit clad guys did say "We heard you were new to the neighborhood..." They did bring cookies - although for homemade they really weren't very good. And when we told them we were Muslim they said "that's okay." Like i needed to be told that my chosen religion is okay. I know that. They did give us a handy dandy neighborhood guide. Funny though cause every Sunday most the neighbors go to church (it's a southern thing...even all the gay people go to church) and we are usually diddle daddling around the house - looking like heathens to the church going folks.