Suburbia

I enjoy where we live, even though it's becoming a bit more urban than I'd like. When we first moved here over 15 years ago, we'd regulary see groups of deer walking across our back yard. We could count on raccoons dumping our garbage if we left it out overnight. Once we watched a mother raccoon show her 4 babies how to search our trash cans. One of the babies fell in, and my hubby had to go out and let it out. The mother and the other 3 babies shimmied up a nearby tree, waiting until he went back in the house to make their escape.

A small drainage creek used to periodically flow in our back yard. In the spring, we'd find tadpoles, ducks, and even occasionally small fish in it, until it gradually turned to mud puddles and then a dry trench in the yard. Once, after a large rainfall, we even found a catfish flopping in our yard in the receding puddles.

A mother mallard made her nest in a large bush next to an electric pole... and after laying her eggs, got killed on the road next to her nest. We tried to incubate the eggs, but they didn't make it.

Nature is tough. It's a struggle for animals to survive as people take more and more of their environment. But some animals learn to adapt.

Last week, we finally managed to find enough pause in the nonstop rain to mow the lawn for the first time. The kids donned camoflague clothing and hid in the knee-high grass to avoid helping. (Yes, it was tall enough that they could do it!)

We found a bunny's nest in the knee high grass too... a little hole dug into the lawn, filled with bunny fur hiding a few baby bunnies. Last year some bunnies in another nearby nest got scared during the mowing and ended up under the mower blades. To avoid a similar fate, we covered this hole with a 5-gallon pail during the mowing, and left a small area unmowed. Last night I saw the mother bunny sitting in that little tuft of grass in the middle of the lawn, so it's obvious she returned to her babies. Hopefully we can keep them protected from the mower until they're old enough to escape on their own. I wanted to get a picture of their little nest when the mother was there, but it began to rain so I haven't gotten one yet. If I do, I'll post it later. :)

Birds also struggle to adapt to the urban environment, but sometimes I think the word "birdbrain" is more than accurate. After all, we have around 30 trees on our property, and yet the mother robin built her nest here?


She apparently covered the motion sensor as she built the nest. The light was on non-stop during the building process, but now it won't go on at all.

One of the babies recently died. One of the kids found it on the ground under the nest, and was pretty upset. It's tough to be a bird.

Sometimes, when you think life is a little tough, it's good to just let yourself blend with nature, to remember how much better we have it.