It's not exactly Animal Kingdom...

I suppose I should be thankful for the all the wildlife that appears to thrive around me. As much as I enjoy animals, and certainly Disney's Animal Kingdom is one of my favourite places to visit, it's just not the same being surrounded by wildlife at home all the time. Some of the surprises are quite delightful and amazing...others, not so much.
Sometimes we see deer on our property. In the winter it is very easy to spot deer tracks in the woods. They are all over the place. Just this past weekend, a female white tailed deer was feeling particularly brave - and hungry - and was having breakfast right near our house. She was happily, albeit nervously, nibbling on the birdseed that had fallen from our birdfeeder to the ground. She was so beautiful! She looked up in a little panic every time she heard a sound, but usually it was a car going by and she happily went back to her breakfast. My younger son spotted her first, then my older son and I joined him, and we watched her for a good ten minutes before she casually wandered away towards the treeline and disappeared.
In the spring we have wild garlic that grows in the woods. For some reason we noticed the garlic patches always end up flattened. Then one day someone told us the deer like to lie down in the garlic because it covers their scent. Now I like garlic, but I'm not fond enough of it to sleep in it, but that is a pretty intelligent thing to do if you live in the woods and need to hide from predators.
We have seen other amazing things too. We have had flocks of at least sixty wild turkeys wander around right near the house. Who knew these enormous birds could fly up and perch in the trees? Kind of a funny sight when they are sitting way up in a tree. Let's just say they are not the most graceful creatures in nature.
There is a bird sanctuary just a little ways down the road from us. As a result there are literally hundreds of Canada geese and different varieties of ducks that hang out in our neighbourhood, so we are often treated to displays of them flying very low overhead. It is fascinating to have them so close you can hear their wings flapping and little honks as they fly over. We also get to see the cute goslings when they hatch in the spring. Sometimes they even hold up traffic.
We have been lucky enough to witness great blue herons nesting nearby too. A rookery is very interesting to see. They are huge, but strangely enough, herons build them right at the tops of trees. Occasionally we see herons at the back of our property or fishing in nearby creeks.
For me, the birds are one of the most enjoyable benefits of living in a rural setting. There are tons of birds around here, and I love watching and listening to them. We have goldfinch, sparrows, nuthatches, rose breasted grosbeaks, hummingbirds, robins, junkos, mourning doves, several different varieties of woodpeckers, and entire families of blue jays and cardinals that visit our yard frequently. One time I saw this brilliant blue bird that I later identified as an indigo bunting. Occasionally we have Baltimore orioles too. They are gorgeous. At night I have heard owls, but I have not seen them on our property...but have seen them not too far from here on a friend's property. One of my favourite things is to listen to the cardinals calling in the evening. I have learned recently that an inexpensive method to treat slippery spots in the winter is to sprinkle some bird seed over it. The side benefit is the birds enjoy it too. Hopefully someday my biggest problem will be to be woken up by the sound of chirping birds early in the morning. At that point, I figure I will be living a very happy life.
Ah, but for now, all is not perfect here in this haven. There are plenty of not-so-cute critters that show up here and unpleasant things happen. Living in the rural wilds of the southern Niagara Peninsula can be a huge challenge for me in the warmer months. As you may recall from an earlier installment of Life as Joan sees it, a creek runs through our property. The first summer we lived here, I lived in our house full time, but Alex was still working in Toronto during the week. My darling husband thought I was either losing it, or imagining things, because in almost every phone conversation we had while he was away, I complained about all these traumatic encounters I was having with snakes. I learned first hand that snakes love to live near our creek. Unfortunately for me, our house had not been occupied for close to a year before we moved in...so the snakes had really moved in and made themselves at home! Of course after Alex was here full time, it only took him a little while to figure out I wasn't imagining things - we actually have a remarkable population of these creepy reptiles that enjoy living around here. I have encountered many a snake in the driveway, a snake stretched out horizontally along a rose trellis, snakes in the grass, snakes in the garden, and snakes in our house! Nope, I kid you not....on several occasions I have discovered a snake in the basement, and one time I happened across one just inside the entry door when I walked in. Yikes!!! And yes, Alex finds them occasionally too, but for whatever reason I have this uncanny ability to encounter them the most. As it was, when we moved here, roughly fifteen years ago, I was not even able to comfortably look at photographs of snakes...but believe me, this abundance of these critters up close and personal has done nothing for my fear, or I should say at this point, full blown phobia of snakes. And it's not that they might bite me. These are only garter snakes and milk snakes (so far....), but it's not the kind or size of snakes for me, it's the fact they don't have legs, and the way they move.....I've just got to run away - fast! Just over a year ago our generous, wonderful friends, Mike and his father Moe Montgomery were kind enough to help with our lawn maintenance while Alex was in hospital. After mowing our lawn several times with their crew, Mike shared a few less than savoury stories about the snakes he and his crew had encountered here. Mike commented that he thinks we must have the highest population density of snakes on our property that he has ever seen. I tend to believe him, based on my personal experience, and considering Mike and Moe are professional landscapers who have worked in the area for quite a few years. Obviously I have no photos to show you...I could never stay still enough near one to take its photo! You will just have to take my word for it.
Well, sadly, or possibly happily, this is not the end of this wild tale. Twice now cars have hit a deer along the road in front of our property. They are such graceful, gentle animals. I get teary eyed just thinking about that.
We also have an abundance of rabbits, voles and more than our fair share of cats wandering around. I have not had much success growing tulips because the voles and rabbits enjoy them so much. And considering our one and only (spayed) house cat met her demise about five years ago, we have an awful lot of felines wandering our yard. I guess some people think it's fine to go out on a back road and dump off their cat because they don't want them any more. I can't imagine what is going through their minds to do something so cruel. I suppose the problem is they don't really put any thought into their actions. They don't just die right away...they try their best to survive. I don't know that we can do anything about it. We see a lot of cats...it's this neverending variety of them. They do not tend to be around for very long though, just different ones show up and prowl around for a while, then they disappear. Very sad...
There have been salamanders in the basement, I suppose that isn't so bad. Then there have been a couple partial carcasses of rabbits (we suspect they were the unfortunate victims of hawks or coyotes). Oh yes, how could I forget the coyotes! Apparently they enjoy living near the railroad tracks a little ways from us, so sometimes at night we hear them howling and barking away. We did see one walk across our property one afternoon a couple of years ago, then it wandered across the road and into the bush. Thankfully, we don't see them much and our dog has not had any close encounters with them - at least not that we know of.
Speaking of close encounters, we have had raccoons hanging out in the tree right near the house in the summer. Try as they might, they don't seem to be able to figure out how to get into our bird feeder, or the carport, thank goodness. The Ministry of Environment periodically visits our property to trap raccoons in order to vaccinate them for rabies. One time they found a partial albino raccoon.
And then there was the skunk. This very sad, extremely slow moving skunk wandered in and took up residence in our dog's house one afternoon. Thankfully, neither our dog nor anyone else got sprayed. I ended up calling the SPCA because I could not figure out for the life of me what to do. A kind fellow came out to the house and told us that it was suffering from distemper and then he put it down and took it away. That was awful. Then I had to disinfect the dog house. Yuck!
It is all very interesting, I suppose, and just how life is here, but sometimes it would be nice to have a little less of this interesting stuff.
I'll keep you posted.