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Journal bethanie's Journal: The Wild Life 27

Journal by bethanie
So life in the new house is pretty spectacular. It's amazingly comfortable and beautiful and big. I'll be really happy when they finally finish working on it, so I can try living here "for real" without construction guys coming in and out all day long.

And the place veritably hums with wildlife. In the evening we can hardly hear ourselves talking over the ringing of the cicadas. And after our (frequent) thunderstorms, the bullfrogs never fail to sing. For a while, I thought I was hearing romantic cows (or perhaps deer) out in the woods, maybe on the other side of the lake. Now I think I've figured out that those are owls. At night, the sounds of the bugs outside pulse rhythmically like the ticking of nature's clock. Back and forth, back and forth -- it's a sonic pendulum.

The scorpion count is up to 4 -- the first one was on the freshly-cleaned driveway. I caught it and kept it in a measuring cup for 4 days; it was still alive when I finally got an empty jar and gassed it with a couple of alcohol-soaked cotton balls. (Wanted to preserve it so my mother the schoolteacher could take it home with her to Cali to share with her students.)

The second scorpion was in the master bathroom. On the tile platform that the jetted tub sits in. While I was in the tub. Alone. Naked. I called sleeping Hubby in to kill that one. He was going to throw the thoroughly squooshed corpse in the trash. I asked him to flush it down the toilet instead.

Numbers 3 and 4 were outside -- one on the front porch (I used the hose to squirt it out into the yard) and the other next to the newly installed hose bib. Both of those were allowed to live, since they were outside. Slowly but surely, I'm getting over visions of that scene from Clash of the Titans every time I run across one of these nasty little critters, which have yet to exceed two inches in length, by the way.

Oh, and of course, there was the mouse that I discovered in the trash can Saturday morning. I hate it when things make me squeal like a girl. But squeal I did. And off to Wal-Mart I went, where I acquired a package of the old-fashioned spring traps and a couple of nifty acrylic-box live traps (as seen on TV! though I never have. Must be watching the wrong programs, I guess).

After baiting & placing the traps, I went to go tuck the kid in bed. Ten minutes later, I heard scraping and scratching under the range where I had left one of the live traps. When I checked on it, it was empty, but it had been moved about 5 inches. I wedged it back in its original position. When I came back again to check it 30 minutes later, it was gone completely. I lid on the floor and searched with a flashlight; I could hear more scratching from behind the cabinets, but I figured I'd have to wait until morning to explore more.

Come morning, I was perched (rather precariously) on the kitchen countertop, trying to use the vacuum wand to poke around behind the cabinet to get a seal on the little box and pull it out. Finally, Hubby had to come in to help and we scooted the 300+ lb range away from the wall so I could get in behind it. After that, maneuvering the vacuum and sucking the trap out was a cinch.

Sure enough, there was a cute little mousy in there. I showed it to the kid, who exclaimed, "Bunny Rabbit!" I terrorized my mother with it for a while (must be where I get the girly squeals from -- certainly not from my bad-ass Marine dad) and then took it out about 200 feet away from the house down the driveway to release it. Of course, I also brought the dog with me. :-) She didn't even notice the mouse until it got about 20 feet away, and then she made short work of it.

Scramble. Pounce, look, look, pounce, scramble scramble, POUNCE. Trot trot trot trot (dangle dangle dangle).

It was my own little nature show. I could almost hear Lorne Greene in the background. Yes, indeed. The country life is good (mosquito bites notwithstanding).
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The Wild Life More

The Wild Life

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  • What an interesting journal entry... :-D

    Ya know, the wildlife are your *friends*, bethanie. Just as you are part of nature, so are they. :)

  • Just finishing lunch when I thought I would check in.

    Lorne Greene? Would that be Lorne Greene as in "Here, Hop Sing, cook *this* for supper"?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Oh, believe me, I'm no animal rights zealot. I believe that there's a reason that we're at the top of the food chain, and we need to defend that position every chance we get.

      I know about those rat traps. I was at my folks' house in Cali when they were having a problem with a rat infestation of the wisteria growing over the patio covering. (Here's a tip folks: Dog food ain't just for dogs, and leaving it out 24/7 will attract all kinds of little and not-so-little nibblers.) Anyway, they caught 6 rats in on
  • Scorpions were usually around that size but seemed more plentiful. Of course it could be that we lived in a barely developed forest turned subdivision (10 acres with only 5-6 houses in a cluster in the middle).

    Noe the mive were never much of a problem, however the rats were. Even the big rat traps wouldn't kill those things and the cats in the neighborhood cowered in fear at the thought of them. Any time our spring loaded rat trap caught one we had to actually kill it with a .22 cause they would go on s
  • Shipping some of those scorpions live [if it's ok with US postal regs]? I'd pay for postage/UPS whatever.What kind are they? You seem to have quite a few running around.
    • What in the WORLD do you want them for?!?

      I don't know what kind they are. Little black ones. Creepy crawly ones. The herpetologist next door (a man who would know) says that they never grow beyond a couple of inches. Thank god for "small" favors!!

      ....Bethanie....
      • My wife's a vector ecologist [glacvcd.org] collects dead and live "bugs", heh she'd hurt me if she heard me lump 'em all together like that, and she has managed to turn it into one of my hobbies as well. Our house looks like a museum/zoo. Pinned bugs in display cases, live snake, wood boring scorpions, used to have a Tarantula. At her work it's even worse hissing cockroaches [uggh], rodents, snakes [poisonous and non], Tarantulas and Tarantula Hawks and on and on. We're always looking for new specimens from just about an
        • OK, so it doesn't have to be alive?

          I think I could probably do that. We've got all kinds of bugs around here that show up totally intact, but dead. There's a really cool beetle on the garage floor right now, as a matter of fact. There was a pretty little butterfly the other day, but I'm afraid someone may have stepped on it by now.

          If you like, you can e-mail your info to my yahoo account and next time I come across a "specimen" I'll set it aside for you. :-)

          How easy is that?

          ....Bethanie....
          • Cool, I'll be in touch. I would like to try and get one of those scorpions live, if not the next best pop them in a sealable [baby food jars work real well, depending on size of bug] container of rubbing alcohol [vodka and scotch work in emergencies as we found out in Death Valley]. The problem is they dry out and are not as flexible for mounting/pinning, pickling them keeps them just right, but I'll take 'em in any shape. Thanks!
            • Well, it probably would be fairly easy to get you one live, since the one I had penned up for a few days was *very* sturdy. I don't know how it stayed alive, but it did. From Georgia to CA through the mail should be no sweat. Just take care not to get stung when you receive it! :-)

              ....Bethanie....

  • It's not too bad having wildlife near your home. I'm not exactly in the country, but I get plenty of birds. I like to record them with my computer. Among my collection of firework/explosion, car, water, cricket sounds, I have plenty of bird sounds too. :-)

    I hate scorpions though. And all poisonous creatures. I suppose I'm lucky my house only has wasps--and I made sure they're afraid to come inside. ;-)

  • My wife and I just moved into new construction here in Elkton, Maryland [mapquest.com], right on the Peninsula, and we've been blown away by the number of birds that are here.
    Swarms of swallows come out every evening.
    We have our own egret in the "lake" across the driveway.
    --Begin Side Story--
    My wife insists it's a 'lake'. I refer to it as a 'pond'.
    Our neighbor sent out an invitation that we received and in the directions, people were told to drive up "along the lake and up a small hill".
    I told her, "You women are crazy.
    • What would you call a ~16-acre body of water? Personally, I call it a pond. Naturally, people who live on it want to call it a lake (because "lake-front" sounds so much more desirable than "pond-front" dontchya know?!). But I was wondering what your opinion is.

      And that kind of turns me on. Gotta go.

      Hopefully, to go "appreciate" your wife for a while. :-)

      That sounds pretty cool. That's how I felt with the mouse. It was like, "Hey -- you're a cute little fella. Now DIE, fucker." I guess Clint's always
      • Check out Dirty Harry [imdb.com], the scense of San Francisco are amazing. And Heartbreak Ridge is one of my favorites, even if Mario van Peebles is in it.
        And, yes, Lake-front sounds a lot better.
        • What I really like about Clint Eastwood is that he's really good at playing characters that dwell in the "grey" area. Nothing is strictly black/white/good/evil. I've appreciated it in his later films, particularly, but I suppose that Dirty Harry is another of those characters. I've probably seen the movie scene-by-scene (Dad is a big fan of the genre), but I have not sat down and watched it as an adult. Now I'll add it to my list. Chances are, once we get the satellite installed, it'll be on TBS or TNT or w

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