The Birds, They Are A-Bairning

I recently had 5 baby  fledge from a coffee-canister nest in the rafters of my barn and watched their parents lead them to the forest behind the house. Now I have a nest of  - they're above the door post so I can't look in to count them but there's at least 3 and I think 4 - on my front stoop and a nest of  in my rose garden with at least 3 eggs. I have  in the privet hedge, the holly tree, the Scotch Pine, and in one of my loquat trees. They never fail to show up and nest. The Wrens usually make a nest on the back porch and my big pig, Spig, watches them curiously. It really is amazing to watch. The Wrens will come down and peck up pieces of her dried-on food right off her lips, nose, and chin. She doesn't move at all when they're feeding. 

I have huge , taupe-colored lizards with bright crimson on the sides of their heads during breeding season, which is now. A few of the big males will get up to a foot and a half long. They eat mice, frogs, toads...and small children. ;) Old people here still call them 'scorpions' and think they have a poisonous bite. They don't, or I'd've been dead as a kid. There were few things that live in the Southeast I haven't been bitten by except poisonous snakes, black widows, or brown recluses. Everything else...pretty much. If it flips, flaps, flops, flutters, farts, or flies, it's sought me out for an educational biting. I could amass a Ph.D. in Bitology.

There are things I miss about living in the city, and that's what having a car with far too much horsepower is all about fixing when I'm feeling the need. But there's so much life here in Podunkia that most people drive right by or shut out of their homes and never see. Then, when it's gone, they'll shrug and move along. But, there will come a day when it's too late to turn back the clock, if that day hasn't come already. I hope it hasn't, and I hope we're smart enough to cherish and protect the things that make our only home - Mother Earth - home. A barren planet has no appeal to me but that I might bring life to it. I love our lush, verdant Mother, but I would share her carefully with others if it would stake a claim for humans on another rock, a backup plan in case ours gets involved in a galactic game of billiards.

Until then, birds are a-birding, bees are a-beeing, and I'm in my own little piece of Paradise.