Wildlife - 9/24/2019

It's pretty near 9 p.m., and I am sitting on the back porch de-compressing from a long, tiring day.  It's quiet, except for the crickets and the frogs, and there's just a little whiff of fall in the air.

A few mornings ago, I woke up early and came out here with laptop and my first cup of coffee about 4:30.  It wasn't quite daylight yet; the birds were still asleep.  All of a sudden, I heard the growl of what sounded like a very large cat.  VERY LARGE.  I'm talking jungle movie large.  It was also very close, sounded like it was coming from the pond at the bottom of the hill.  It make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  Local folks claim to have sighted a panther in the vicinity.  I even saw one, myself, a year or two ago, and a few miles from here.  I gathered up my stuff and went inside.

I don't think it was really a panther.  I think it was a bobcat.  Still . . . .

Seems like we're over-run with critters these days.  Coyotes are yipping down in the bottom every night.  An armadillo is digging up the entire yard.  There's a bunny living under the shed, some chipmunks under the porch, and several skinks living ON the porch (they pooped on my settee!). 

The insects are thriving, too.  A couple of weeks ago, The Husband and I were weeding a flower bed by the porch, and a bumble-bee got after me.  I moved back, and the bee kept coming.  Chased me right onto the porch, and when I closed the screen door between him and me, he hovered right outside the door, like he was daring me to come out.  The next morning, I noticed the buzz of several bees around a four-o'-clock plant by the porch.  The next day, when the four-o'-clocks were still closed up, I noticed the bees still humming around it.  After watching them for a while, I realized that they weren't working on the flowers, they were going UNDER the porch.  This porch is built right on the ground, and there was no way I could see what they were doing under there, but I could hear a fairly constant, muffled, mini-chainsaw sound.

A bumble-bee nest under the porch concerned me a little.  I called the County Extension Service.  The agent told me that I ought to get some bug poison and spray it under the porch, but I don't think he understood that this porch is literally right on the ground.  I'd be shooting poison blindly (and I might accidentally squirt the chipmunks).  Besides that, I hated to kill the bees.  The world needs bees.  So I decided to leave them alone.

But then one got INSIDE the porch.  And then another.  And then another.  And one of them swooped my head.  I almost broke my neck stumbling over furniture, trying to get away from him.  I picked up a board that I'd been painting, and swung it like a baseball bat.  Knocked the bee into the screen, and he fell onto the floor, but before I could off him, he shook himself, got up and flew up into the rafters where I couldn't get him.  He sat up there for hours, contemplating my death. 

That did it.  I called the exterminator.  He sprinkled some powder around the place where they were going under the porch, but they are still under there, chain-sawing.

We had to call him again last weekend to rid us of some yellow-jackets that appeared to have nested under the roof.

And now a bobcat.