The Taylor place is something of an oddity. We actually live within the Greenville City Limits but for some reason we seem to attract a variety of wildlife. Sometimes our four-legged friends venture into my flower beds.
I also cherish my flower beds, even though one looks horrible now as I am replanting it. Let me state upfront that flower beds and wildlife are not always compatible. Especially if the wildlife prefers digging up grubs. We have regular visits from possums, skunks, and armadillos looking for creepy crawlers. Of course, my flower beds are their favorite place to dig as the soil is usually moist and soft.
One morning last summer I was standing in the bed I refer to as my cutting garden. I looked down and thought I saw a round rock. But Hunt County doesn’t naturally have rocks, at least not at the surface. I looked a little farther and there was an adult armadillo. The pair found this a most delicious diner until fall. There was no way I could catch them in a trap; their olfactory senses do not lead them to food. All summer they dug, and I gritted my teeth and stomped my feet. The armadillos won that contest. My husband even cobbled up a trap to no avail. I haven’t seen them this spring. Maybe they moved on to better hunting ground.
Skunks occasionally sleep under the house in the winter. The county trapper told me they return to the same spot to have babies and spend the season. After about three or four years, I hope they have found a better spot.
I have only seen one possum. The corner of our lot fence is in a low place where leaves and limbs get tossed, a perfect place for the possum family to nest in the winter. The possum caused no problems, but their teeth look so dangerous.
Snakes are, of course, visitors once the weather warms up. As a child I was told to wear closed-toe shoes and long pants in the pastures to guard from snake bites. Once a snake was spotted, freeze! Don’t move an inch, don’t rub your eyes or nose, and definitely don’t scream, jump around, or act like a fool. Eventually it will slither away. As my grandfather always said, “They are more afraid of you than you are of them.”
The summer of 2010 was incredibly hot. Sometime in late April or early May I found a garter snake under the garage door when I came home one day. Since garter snakes are harmless, I assume it was looking for a cool resting spot. Once one got into the garage and crawled into my husband’s open toolbox. I had a terrible time trying to get it out before my husband came in. He and our son are terribly afraid of snakes. But he should have closed the lid on the toolbox.
Then there are squirrels! I used to think they were so cute until they started eating my tulip bulbs. I think tulips and forsythia are wonderful harbingers of spring. Squirrels don’t even notice the forsythia, but do they love tulip bulbs. A squirrel can detect a tulip bulb long before the stem pops out of the ground. But squirrels abhor jonquil or daffodil bulbs. I put some in two pots on the back porch last fall. When I would go outside, some of the bulbs would be on the porch. I put them back in the soil, and the same thing happened again. I finally realized I had to give up my tulip bulbs for those cute yellow daffodils.
We are also home to rabbits, tortoises or terrapins, and lots of birds. In fact, a mother Mourning Dove laid eggs in the chimney earlier this spring. Now we have an evening concert from her starving offspring. Welcome Spring!