Creatures Great and Small

I feel like this has been a year of extra creatures flitting, crawling and startling into my life.  I was surprised to encounter 3 different bugs in our California apartment, besides the usual spiders.  I mean it's in the middle of concrete so I wondered how they got in.  They were:

1) a creepy black worm-like creature under my dining room chair:

Seriously, what is that thing?

2) lots of crickets - I think; and
3) 2 different cockroaches, both inducing a scream, one of which was at 4:00 am when it ran across my foot.  Sorry neighbors, but little feet on your feet at 4:00 am require a shriek.

So let's move on to nicer creatures that make us smile and buy stuffed animals.  We went to the beach often and usually saw at least whale spouts, if not actual whale flesh, plus a large flock of pelicans and this sea lion. 

 

There were also a pair of ducks that wandered around our apartment building and were the only ones who thought the pool wasn't too cold to use.  I didn't realize they were Jewish, but I caught them with a tiny fiddle on the roof one night. 



 

So enough of California.  Oregon is the real wilderness!  When we returned home, our animals were in fine form, and Ellie May couldn't wait to get busy catching mice:

 

Korina, Buckwheat and Sammy Davis assured me that were in fact STARVING and I'd better feed them masses of green stuff IMMEDIATELY.



 



For the first time I had two chickens get broody at the same time and even tried to shove their ample rumps into the same nest to sit on eggs.  Of course I never had my camera ready when they did this, but this was their compromise. 

 

Strangely, none of the eggs they were sitting on ever hatched.  I don't know if the extreme heat cooked them or what happened, but after a 5-week vacation I put Miss Brown Betty back to work. There were, however, other tiny fowl in our yard:

Baby robins in the pear tree



My neighbor's guinea hens with 3 keets



 

If you've never heard a guinea hen, they sound like screeching bicycle brakes.  I mean, exactly like screeching bicycle brakes.  It's a horrible noise.  And they've adopted us for some reason.


Note:  Over the years we have had the following escaped neighbor's animals in our yard: a horse, cows, dogs (with a collar, with a collar and a chain attached, and with a collar, chain, and stake attached), goats, ducks, chickens, guinea hens, and cats. 



This was the year of the wasp.  Amazingly I haven't been stung yet, compared to 3 times last summer.  I've been waging battle against them and spraying soapy water out of water guns on them at dusk.  Here's the biggest nest that we can't seem to get enough thrust from our gun to knock down.

 

This next one wins the prize for creepiest.  While my brother was visiting we were sitting on the patio in the evening chatting when this bugzilla was drawn to the patio light.  There was more screaming than a Justin Bieber concert, especially when it landed on his stomach.  Our 1-2 punch with a golf club and clog beheaded it and killed it 3 times over, although it continued gruesomely twitching much longer. We discovered it was a California Prionus beetle.

 

And the rest...

Baby Praying Mantis!

A pair of hummingbirds were frequent visitors

 

 

Okay, this isn't really wild, but it's BIG, and we all know that bigger is better!

 

We also have a brown barn owl that flies very low over our heads at dusk, and of course the coyotes, both howling in packs and singly drooling at our chicken coop at daybreak.  And I didn't mention all the DEAD animals.  Oh vey, our burn pile floweth over with them (because that's where all carcasses go out here in hillbilly country).  The ones I can remember are 2 hens, 1 large rat, 10 baby rats, birds, a mole, plus sundry mousey parts, especially little beady eyes that Ellie May left for our viewing pleasure on the door mat. 

 

So not exactly James Herriott.  More like...the Clampett's dinner menu.