My Neighborhood Zoo: A Learning Exercise

I have to get up verrrrry early to walk my ChiWeenie. It takes about 55 minutes of stops and starts for her to leave her calling card at nearly every mailbox and delivering the "daily packages" on specific tracts of grass for which only she knows the formula/smell/canine reasoning. Each morning on our walk is like touring a personal neighborhood zoo sans any barriers or neatly lettered descriptions of each species. Having a dog that is part Dachshund enhances the chances that I will see camouflaged animals and those that are too small for me to notice from my height. She also flushes out of hiding birds and rodents and bugs. Some she tries to eat. I have learned a lot about many of the following from observing and/or researching them on my computer. There are the familiar and some oddities I didn't expect to see. Chee-Sy and I have seen turtles copulating next to the curb, baby snakes, frogs after a rain, lizards inside and outside my house eating bugs and trying to escape the ChiWeenie, skinks, chameleons, snails, slugs ugh making those unmistakable silvery trails, armadillos (yes in MS) usually in the morning crossing the road to check out the vegetation, roadrunners, woodpeckers beating their beaks against bark to punch a hole in an old oak tree, cardinals, hummingbirds around my feeder in the backyard, coopers hawks, buzzards, cicadas as big as my two thumbs, bumble bees, butterflies, raccoons on garbage day, chipmunks, shrews under my porch, moles or at least their above ground trails dug into my lawn, squirrels, rats & mice, rabbits in my neighbor's yard ever alert to danger and the ChiWeenie, and of course lots of dogs & cats suitable for petting. Observing from my porch or walking the dog around my neighborhood zoo is educational and the exercise helps me trim a few pounds too.

Super Moon, not...

Tried taking photos of the "super moon" last nite and the nite before. I used two different digital cameras. The pix came out OK but I don't think it was a very "super" moon. It was kinda like the difference between a regular egg and a jumbo egg...with a bit more of the white stuff. Definitely not something to tick off my "bucket list". Got up this morning at 6:05 AM to walk the dog (she "insisted" with her cold nose and barely audible but very annoying whine). The dew that had collected on the azalea leaves was shining in the early light. There was a soft breeze. As we rapidly walked around the neighborhood, and my skin began to glisten with perspiration (southern women do not sweat), I felt the cooling breeze flow across my legs and arms. The moderate morning temperature with a gentle wind is a good reason to get up early to exercise or walk the dog. We saw a turtle, bunny, blue jay, cardinal, thousands of dead and dying worms, and a couple of baby snakes. Of course the dog had to investigate every one of them and I tried to prevent her from having a breakfast of worms by dragging her into the middle of the road. Then I had to drag her up onto a lawn or driveway to avoid the early commuters. Thankfully I'm not the only one up at this hour. When the dog indicated that she had to poop I stopped and made sure no one was looking. Some people can be hostile about a little dog poop. They have gone so far as to put up intimidating signs and sit on their front porches as a deterrent. Seems like a lot of bother. I don't mind if people let their dogs relieve themselves on my lawn, in fact I encourage it. The rain will eventually wash it away. It's natural. So I finished the dog walk, had breakfast, checked e-mail, scanned my favorite blogs, had a cup of coffee, had another cup of coffee, dusted, watered the indoor plants, and planned the rest of my day. I decided that I will do very little in this heat. Tomorrow, I'll break up the day with a visit to my Internist (that's a doctor that tells you you need to lose weight and to keep taking your statin drugs which can cause weight gain). That's it. Another day in the "SUNNY" south.

What a lovely day!

I went for the usual 1.5 mile morning walk with Chee Sy (my chiweenie) and caught the special smell of ligustrum. Roses, hyacinths, crepe myrtle, and grass, lots of grass brought tears to my eyes (allergies). It's closing in on mid May and we are 8-10 inches over our usual rainfall. We have been setting records for new low temperatures daytime and nighttime for months. The plants are responding by growing fast and big. It's worth a few sneezes to be able to enjoy nature's springtime show this year. Cue the credits: sun, rain, soil, my lawn care guy (John) etc.

Day after the storm...

Yesterday we had one doozy of a storm. It felt like the fringe of a tornado, you know, with hail and high winds. The skies were dark enough at 2pm to activate the sensors in our Malibu lights that line the sidewalk. But we also had lightening and lots-o-rain. Rivers of yellow pollen from all the budding plants were flowing down the street into gutters. One car dealership in Hinds County had 250 damaged cars from baseball sized hail that took out windows and heavily dented the roofs. Pearl and Brandon got hit with wind and hail. Fortunately the hail that hit our subdivision was only dime sized. My chiweenie and I were not really too upset at the wind or lightening so we sat on the screened-in back porch and watched the proceedings. Mother Nature can put on a spectacular reality show.

Spring is very early this year, maybe a good sign or just a nice few months before it becomes terribly hot and steamy humid. The Bradford Pear trees have bloomed, the jonquils are up, and the grass is greening. Our local car wash is doing a booming business. People are taking their lunch breaks on restaurant patios. It's still cool enough for a brisk walk at 8am. This is the time of year I love. Today, the day after the storm, the sun is shining, it's a balmy 61 degrees, the birds are singing, and the pollen is flying again. I'll take it.

'The Long Rain'...

"It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping in the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains." This is the first sentence from "The Long Rain" a sci-fi short story by Ray Bradbury, published in "The Illustrated Man" that chronicles an indeterminate period of time after four men have crash landed their space ship on Venus. They are trying to reach the safety of the 'Sun Domes' to escape the planet's constant, unrelenting rain. Three men die: one from a lightening strike, one is murdered, and one commits suicide. The lone survivor finds safety, warmth, and dry clothes in what he believes is 'the dome'. But he may simply be hallucinating...

We are having a version of "The Long Rain" after "The Long Drought" where I live in MS. We tried to see the advantages to having so much rain after not having any for such a long time. We were looking forward to smaller water bills, greener, healthier plants and lawns, having hose and sprinklers as decoration instead of necessities. Now, after almost 2 months of drenching downpours, in record amounts, we are measuring the diameter of mushrooms in our yard compared with those of our neighbors. So far the winner is four inches wide from a yard two streets over. Our next door neighbor's two outside dogs have matching coats of Yazoo mud and my backyard has become a swimming pool.

The only thing worse than this 'long rain' would be a long hot, dry summer with little or no relief from triple digit temps and near 100 percent humidity. Wishing for a hurricane to hit the MS coast and deliver a change to our weather here can't be a good way to cool down from June through September. Having to stay indoors because of too much rain or too much sun sucks. If there isn't anything we can do about the weather, we will have to learn how to adapt and live with it, (like Sun Domes). Science fiction writers just might be our go to sources for answers about how we can adjust our living environment to cope with the extreme weather to come. My preference is a rubber house (with flotation properties) that has a 'sun' room equipped with banks of UV lighting where plants AND humans might spend some quality time. There I could write a sequel titled "The Long Rain-Earth".