It Snarled

Opossums trotting through the layer of oak leaves that's all around the house make a rustling sound exactly like a person. Out on the porch I looked for a person and found an opossum passing through. It did not play dead at all, but faced me and hissed with a mouth full of sharp white teeth, not at all like a person. It wasn't ready for its close-up.

Good Morning

Because daytime heat mounts quickly now, I hike the woods and meadows in the early morning, thinking I'm alone and apart from society, like Thoreau, but the fact is that company is everywhere. I politely said "Good morning" to this young and beautiful Three-toed Box Turtle at the woods' edge. Young, I guessed, because of its moist shiny shell, clear markings, and the fact that it wasn't scared of me.

Poultry in Motion

In the road I saw, in last night's rapidly melting snow:

and decided I'd follow the track back to its source. The wild turkey had crossed a frozen creek, a little tentatively. . .

and before that, had stepped over this log. The melting snow made the tracks more difficult to trace, but they led to a known game trail. The turkey had crossed paths with a rabbit:

and the tracks ended in the canopied woods, where the bird had scratched up leaf litter not once but twice, seeking food. And before that it probably spent the snowy, sleety night in a tree. Breeding starts very soon.

Black is the New Orange

I vow on a stack of hymnals this is the final time I will ever mention mu---ooms, but (look hard) here was such a miniscule living gem of a snail, exquisite as a diamond, tender as a rice noodle, discovered while I was wiping bits of dirt from a pound of fresh-picked chanterelles, and it too was the answer to my question: Who besides box turtles and pin-sized maggots chews up the Divine Property's mother lode of chanterelle mu---ooms before I find and get a hold of them?

Hard Up, Are Ya?

When it got dark I heard heavy thuds and thunks on my roof. My hair stood on end. I locked the doors, hunkered down, and prepared to murder somebody.

In the morning I go outside and find a hummingbird feeder has been knocked off its hook. It's glass and fortunately hasn't broken. So I cook up new nectar, refill it and hang it.

After dark again, thud, thunk--sounding just like a man wearing heavy boots, walking on my roof. He will be sorry he did that, I vow. Just let him show his face.

Next morning one of my hummingbird feeders is missing. I look everywhere. It's bright red; it shouldn't be hard to find. But it's nowhere to be found! Those things are expensive! And the others are askew and empty! I filled them only yesterday!

In the early evening, while there's enough light to see, I'm on my porch and hear thunk, thunk, and to my surprise I see not five feet from my face the upside-down top half of a raccoon curled over my gutter, batting at and molesting one of the two remaining hummingbird feeders. So greedy it will try to steal 4:1 diluted sugar water? That's hard up! I grab the broom and chase it while saying bad words, and take the feeders into the house.

Next morning I walk to the mailbox in my pajamas and walking uphill I see a red object on my roof. It's my missing nectar feeder! Upright no less! Now to find a monitor who will watch me while I go up on a ladder and get it.

Crunch Crunch

You'll never see another photo like this one: The beaver team down on the LaBarque thought they'd fell this mature creekside oak -- which would have been the largest timber in their dam -- but then changed their minds, apparently. Wonder why? Their jaws got tired? Too much chance it would fall the wrong way and create a fatality? Too tall to guide down their mud chute into the creek? They've simply abandoned this particular tree.

Mating Season Mystery

It was a red fox's tail. Just the tail. In the road.

I know December is fox mating season, so its attacker might have been another fox. They defend their territories, but aren't known to kill or maim each other. Chasing the intruder from the territory is enough.

Foxes have few wild predators: bobcats, bears, golden eagles. Foxes can outrun dogs, as every British hunting party knows. People do say bobcats live here, but I haven't seen proof. Human fox killers, who don't eat them, always want the tail as a trophy. They wouldn't remove it and leave it. Looked around for traces of a car killing. None. So it's a tail without a story.

The dime in the photo lets you see its length -- about 11 inches. That's short for a fox tail so it might have been a young one that got into trouble because it didn't know better. Maybe it sacrificed its tail.

A fox uses its tail for warmth (curling it around and burying its nose in it to sleep) and for balance and to communicate (the way a dog's tail does). Somewhere a red fox around here is minus its tail. It must hurt a lot.

Drama on the Dining-Room Floor

(Not retouched. The flash was 5 inches from the floor.)

Opened the door to the laundry room and saw coiled there a three-inch baby blacksnake. It startled, crawled down a step and snaked away along the dusty dining-room baseboard, where he got caught by the tail in a spider's web and struggled to move forward. Couldn't. The more he thrashed the more he was caught. The spider, who'd been waiting, descended, about to make a meal.

I felt sorry for the snake and snapped the web around it to set him free. Sticky webbing and dust balls were still tangled around his tail, though, hobbling him as he tried to escape. He did all he could to free himself. Here's the 7-second video:

I terrified him trying to remove the dustballs and sticky webbing, but succeeded, and then he curled up for a moment to rest in a safe little pile. By then I had set the camera to "flash" and,as in the photo at the top, saw the reason that the small blacksnakes I meet with in sunlight often look bright silver, not black: reflectivity. Which probably protects them in some way.

Talking reassuringly, I manuevered the snakelet into a container and freed him outside where there was cover so he wouldn't become anybody else's dinner.

Friend With Roots, Friend With Wings

The most gorgeous butterfly in the area, The Great Spangled Fritillary with its orange and black-coffee-colored wings on one side and coffee-and-cream with "eyes" and ruffles on the other, came to visit my young tomato plant yesterday. Butterflies began floating around here in March, about six weeks early, but seem to have flourished.

Meet Wendy, the Turtle Saver

This area's wildlife includes box turtles and painted turtles, and in seeking territories they cross the roads without looking. This Jeep wagon's back window had spelled out on it "I Rescue Turtles," and its owner happened by. Wendy loves all animals, but she is the turtle-rescuing squad around here. She will pick up turtles with cracked shells, who have been run over by cars, and take them to the animal hospital where she says the shells can often be fixed and the turtles made well again. That was news to me. She will stop and get a turtle out of the road or turn it around if it's headed for danger. She has 15 acres, room to bring turtles home and feed them melon rinds and corn on the cob until they're ready for the wild again. She said her mother raised turtles on Long Island, but what made her a turtle rescuer here in Missouri was witnessing a driver deliberately swerving his truck to crush a turtle that was in the road shoulder. (I myself have heard a crass person say about turtles, "I like to hear 'em pop.") She furiously followed the driver, pulled alongside and gave him the finger. "I don't do things like that," she said, "but I was so mad."

God bless Wendy the turtle savior! She is the answer to all turtle prayers.

Venus Retrograde

A little bit of grief this spring over a relationship that was long-term and long-distance. After two years and ten months of being together, I totally faithful and trusting the man completely up until the last few months when I got mildly suspicious, he admitted he was seeing a married woman, and another woman, and maybe yet even another one (he knows how to seduce the lonely ones), and offered me a deal: We could keep seeing each other just as we had been, maybe a little less often, like every five to seven weeks. Translation: I could stay on his string. "I've never thought that love was finite," he said, not realizing that what he'd just offered me was very finite indeed.

The torch in my heart flamed out instantly. I was calm and composed. I said, "I'm so disappointed in you." I asked him what if I'd been messing with other men. He declared he'd be happy for me.

No normal man thinks that way. And anyone involved in adultery isn't very smart. If that was his chosen relationship I had no choice but to leave him.

He'd given me his mother's brooch, an amethyst surrounded by beads of millefiori glass. It was an unusual costume piece and went with everything. Unfortunately I never photographed it. I wore it near my heart as an emblem of love. I was wearing it and removed it and handed it to him, saying, "Give this to someone you love."

"I did!" he said. But his definition of love wasn't mine. I like honesty.

I wished I did not have to, but I packed up and walked out into the night and got into my car for the two-and-a-half-hour drive home. He was upset. He wanted me to stay. We could have dinner or something. I said, "Only a foolish woman would stay."And I stand by that. I drew the line. It feels much better to be the dumper than the dumpee.

In the future I will trust less, and will love less deeply. And that's what I've got to say about the planet Venus going retrograde on Tuesday.

"Will You Please Help Me?"

"If it's smart enough to find its way in, it's smart enough to find its way out," Demetrius used to yawn, whenever skinks, lizards, snakes and whatnot got into the house. But maybe not. The Broad-Headed Skink that crawled from beneath the dishwasher last month (see April 18th) lived here about 10 days. One afternoon I came home after a day out, and it was in the middle of the kitchen floor clearly waiting for me, and it looked up into my face with an expression that quite plainly said, "I want out. Will you please help me?"

"I will help you," I replied, and opened the porch door and tried luring it out there, but it would not go. (Yes indeed, this skink is missing part of its tail; it was that way when we met. Maybe that's why it was skittish.) Then taking the broom I very gently swept it, an inch at a time, over the threshhold and out onto the porch, and then out the screen door onto the concrete stoop, where for a moment it regarded the wide world it was about to rejoin. This let me take the photo. When the camera got too close, the skink ran away through the grass, to some secret lair where I hope it's much happier. Probably it now makes the rounds on skink talk shows, describing its ordeal among the aliens, and how it survived because God had a special purpose for its life, and so on.