Reflections

by Katie Butler Johnson

I love this time of year.

It’s perfect for spying on the critters that visit or actually live on my property.

Once the oak tree out front drops the leaves blocking my view, I get to see Honeybees flying in and out of a rather large hole up high on its trunk, a hole like the one Pooh got stuck in searching for honey.

Did you know Honeybees don’t go dormant in the winter like Bumble Bees? The Honeybees are the busy ones.

And because I’m just a stone’s throw from the Heard Museum and Wild Life Sanctuary and in the flight path of migratory birds, I have all kinds of bird visitors.

One pair of herons overstayed their welcome: the Yellow Crowned Night Herons. They stayed for what seemed like ages! Let’s call them the Honeymooners. They built their nest directly above my garage, and, ahem, well you can guess just what they did on its roof every day of their stay making it stink and me having to hose it off daily. Talk about being inconsiderate – they took the cake!

I monitored their nest with my binoculars and eventually saw an egg and a little later a tiny bird appeared. I named him Cherub.

Cherub practiced jumping on and off limbs near the nest - never far from the watchful eyes of his doting parents. Then Cherub took short flights to neighboring branches, and, he practiced takeoffs and landings on my circular driveway. Then, one day, the Heron family was gone.

The following year, four Yellow Crowned Night Herons arrived for a visit. I wondered if they were the Honeymooners plus Cherub #1 and a mate - Cherub2. The Honeymooners occupied the nest they’d built the previous year and Cherubs 1&2 built their own in that same tree over the garage leading to me resigned to having double janitor duty with 4 herons settled in up there.

All was going ok for them until that hawk arrived. Let’s call him Bully Boy because he was. He proceeded to harass and dive-bomb both nests. The Honeymooners and the Cherubs decided they didn’t want to deal with Bully Boy and up and left. Bully Boy has ruled the back yard for the past two years, procreating and keeping the squirrels in check. Do you think the Herons gave my backyard a bad avion review because of Bully Boy? Hmmmmm.

Then there’s Brunhilda. She’s a rather large armadillo who built a compound on the side of and several yards under my house’s foundation. She’d waddle out at night searching for grubs - ripping up my carefully nurtured zoysia. I got my son Clay to seal the entrance to her abode. What did she do? She waddled around to the backyard where she dug in way under the veranda and birthed quadruplets! Did you know armadillo always have litters of 4. (And yes they were very cute.) Today the front yard grass has filled in from Brunhilda’s rooting, but the back yard – well that’s another story.

I mustn’t forget Sweet Pea. She settled in Brunhilda’s estate after Brunhilda left. I knew Sweet Pea was in the vicinity because of her signature scent. Then one morning, just at dawn, I saw this slick black furry animal with a fashionable white stripe down her back scampering as fast as her little legs could go to get back home before curfew. I ignored her and she ignored me and eventually moved on.

I can’t omit mentioning Max. He’s a squirrel. He scampers up and down the tree outside the kitchen chasing his Maxine. He likes to pose like Leonardo de Caprio on the bow of the Titanic on a blunt end of a very tall tree’s very short limb to impress his Maxine who loves to rip apart the porch chair cushions and steal batting for her nest when she thinks I’m not looking. Sometimes, Max gives me the evil eye accusing me of blocking his entrance to the attic where he’d built a proper home for his Maxine and their family amidst my attic’s insulation.

I know I’ve just trash-talked some of my fellow creatures, but I do love that I get to see them up close. And I love living at the edge of the woods. It’s quiet and restful. I keep my binocular’s close by and feel in tandem with mother Nature.

Although some of my animal neighbors can be challenging, most keep to themselves. As long as we respect each other’s space, ours is a very peaceable kingdom