Hawk.
And two for some size reference, zoomed out a bit. He/she was prob the size of a cat maybe. Very impressive I thought. Work calls. Later.
Monday Was A Good Day
Two quick pics to keep this site interesting and I am going to get ready for work. Monday was a good day for my viewing numbers–Thank you all for following me!–and it was good for life in general. I felt very good and healthy. Very glad to be alive and thankful for life and family and a job that allows me to have days off during the week. Living the dream, for realz. Haha. Anyhoo, I also managed to accomplish most of my list goals, including shop for food for the fam for the rest of the week while I am at work, and laundry. Sort of. It’s not piled up on the floor, so it counts. I had a hawk in the backyard, first thing, yesterday morning, 7 AM. A hawk. Just sitting there, on the ground, under the bird feeder, scaring away every other species of wildlife in the area. No joke. Not one other animal-like creature, be it bird, squirrel, butterfly, chipmunk, rabbit, etc…, was in my yard the entire time the hawk sat there. And it was very quiet too. No sounds. Not even bugs and insects dare make a peep when the top-of-the-food-chain predator for our little suburb decides to pop a squat after a long night of hunting or whatever it was doing. Of course I got pictures. About 100. Wait until you see them! This is the enticing, hanging story line, that I am using to bring you back tomorrow. I have to sort the pics and pick out the non-blurry ones. And I truly do not have time. As usual, I am pushing my “wasting” time into my actual “need to go” time. If it’s a good night tonight at the old general store, I will post them later, if not, then in the AM when I crawl out of bed. This is the nice time of year for weather around here so everyone enjoy and I will be back. Later.
For The Birds
Hummingbird. Perched. I have more but I can’t find them. Sad face.
The Hawk we had hanging out in the backyard earlier in the spring.
Blue Jay.
Red Winged Blackbird.
Cardinal. Male.
Cardinal. Male. Another one? The same one? Not sure, we had several pairs flying around, yelling all spring.
Cardinals are my favorite bird.
Cardinal. Female. Pretty sure. She’s so scraggly looking. Women of the wild. Not fair.
Yellow Goldfinch. If you look in the middle of the picture. These birds hardly ever come and pose right in front of me. So annoying.
Nuthatch. Thought it was a woodpecker for a very long time.
Don’t know what kind but I like the picture.
Last shot for the morning. Can’t tell what bird this was, I took this picture mostly for that “arty” effect. I have more birds but I really need to go now. Have a fab afternoon. Later.
Another Bug
Hanging out near my sitting spot Friday morning. No harm came to this creature by my hand. I just photo’d him and put him back near a tree. I’m going to do some bird pictures next. Something pretty. I have work today. I am tired. My shift is going to be good. I am telling myself that because I want to have a positive attitude. Super Saturday! We will see.
The First Squash! Times 2!
Look at that! Two yellow squashes. All of a sudden, BOOM. squash everywhere. We looked it up and we are supposed to start picking them small. But we might let at least one try to monster grow. The internet says they will be too tough and inedible if they are too big, but nature must be allowed to have its way. If the animals don’t start chewing on them first, that is. We had 2 more good size “pickers” out there but some little creatures were nibbling all over them and left bite marks and chunks removed from either end. We picked and tossed those. Here is my most recent plant picture. Lots of flowers, lots of small, yellow tubes laying in between the leaves.
OK. That’s it for now. I have to go to work now. I will get the weekend list here with pics. I just downloaded all of them mere minutes ago. So exciting. And I had my day off yesterday which is where I got those fab veg pics from, and high school registration. Times 2! See how I did that? Not that I am comparing my children to squash, but…sometimes…when they are laying v e r y still….only teenagers, and the very old, can achieve the vegetable type of non-movement that makes you actually have to get up close to them to check for breathing and a pulse. Anyone who has been around either group will back me up here. Last picture of this post will be the stack of books we left the school with yesterday, and that my kids will have to haul back with them, in about a week and a half. Very heavy. And very hardcore. This is freshman and sophomore curriculum. I seriously do not remember having such advanced text books. Is this a reflection of the new education standards for a good life vs. the old education minimums to just stay alive? Or as pre-req to Harvard or Yale, (for extreme) example, or NU/SIU, in Illinois, as opposed to the pre-req for Hamburger University? Or was I just “special”?? Either way, I am still alive. And I have a job. Have a great day all.
Weekend Plus!
Benches first. At least one and some filler boards. Hansel and Gretel up first. With a nice back design.
We did everything, plus more!!, on the weekend itinerary. I tried to download the actual list as typed, but it wouldn’t let me. Or I couldn’t figure it out. Either way I don’t have time for it right now. I have work and I need to get showered and dressed so I am not running around like an idiot in an hour because I am so late. I will post it and picture it later in the day, and week, (’cause it’s that much), if possible. We tried to capture the fun of all the moments on camera, but its a hit or miss thing when we get busy and have actual fun. We had three camera’s trying to snap the action though, so something good is bound to have been caught on film. Both of my kiddies are home for the week. School registration is Thursday. Back in class on the 14th. Summer is nearly over and it feels like it just started. I’m still working on my old folder of posts. This is going to clear out a few more pics. This makes 7/20 for benches and there are three filler boards advertising the Farmer’s Market and other events in town. I like the parrot the best.
I took another picture of my garden plant. It is continuing to spread across the yard and up onto the logs. More vegetables have appeared. I think we are going to be hit by a squash flood very soon. None and then a ton. I need to start looking up recipes or something. Pictures are still on my phone. I need to download everything. That will have to be later too. That was kind of a teaser, and so random, but here are the last two filler boards:
Seahorses, coral, and fish.
Flamingo. I’m really not sure if these particular boards represent a greater theme or really even go together with the benches. Doesn’t seem like it. Florida maybe? The tropics? It sure isn’t Fairytale related. But who cares. They are here and they are posted and now I can go get dressed. Our weather has bypassed blistering summer and is now breezy and temperate again. Almost, almost, chilly. Definitely cold at night. So get out and enjoy while you can, if you can. Later gators.
Feed Me Seymour! Feed Me!
Now that might not seem very impressive all on its own, but it is, when you consider that it started like this:
We don’t even know where it came from. That is our “big stump” pile, this bit of nature is growing out of, from when that broken tree was removed so many months ago. I came out one day and there it was. A plant. We decided to leave it because it looked like an actual plant and not a weed. The neighbor behind us has a garden and this same plant is in it. We think zucchini, squash, pumpkin, you know, something like that. Big leaves. Yellow flowers. Super fast growth. Like, accelerated, sonic, creeping, crawling, curling over the branches, type of fast growing. We figured maybe a bird or squirrel or rabbit carried one of the seeds over to our area and poof. Now we have a garden too! Mind you, we have done nothing to this plant. Nothing. No water. No weeding. No maintenance whatsoever. My thought was, that if it really wants to survive, it will have to survive on its own. Survive and thrive. It’s definitely doing that. Every day the thing seems like it’s getting bigger and bigger. When I went out yesterday, my first thought was: Little Shop Of Horrors. Hence the title above. It’s actually kind of scary. Old time movie scary. One day I expect one of those leaves and one of those long, thick stems to be sitting outside the back door tapping on the screen, holding a dead animal. “I’m hungry, Seymour!” “I’m hungry, Lisa!” Damn nature, you scary! (Reference: Tracy Morgan–SNL) And how do you know my name?? OK. Well we have been waiting to see if anything else is gonna grow off this thing except some yellow flowers. This is a good one I took a picture of today:
And then I looked closer. I will admit, as crazy as this sounds, that I was somewhat hesitant to go sticking my hands and arms into the leaves because the plant seems so Jurassic and kind of menacing. But I did. Because I am a human being. A human who is way bigger than a plant and not in a horror movie, or completely “eccentric” or insane at this point in my life. And this is what I saw:
It looks like a squash! Actual food? Maybe? Should we eat it if it actually turns into a vegetable? Is squash a vegetable or a fruit? I don’t know. It’s pretty big I think already, but I have nothing to compare it to, except the other smaller one growing next to it.
So that was my morning. Now I have to go to work. I will keep everyone updated on this gripping tale of, “Growing Something In The Wild!” Ha. Wild. More like, “Growing Something Accidentally In A Suburban Backyard Stick Pile!” Now that, is scary! Later!
Bug Close Ups. A New Low.
Why? My computer will not let me pull up and crop my bench pictures. It is taking way too long to get the images. I have to work today. This is my long week and I am impatient. These two pics were all ready to go. And they are in the folder that needs to be used. I am desperate to post something every day if possible. I guess this is desperate. Anyway here is some phone camera action for you to enjoy on WOW Wednesday. More like, Wait. What? Wah. Wah. Wah. Wednesday. I took the one above with the GS4. Stevie took the one below with her IP4. Yep. That’s it. Have a great day!
Classic Bunny Pose. Right Before We Fed Him To Our New Pet, The Snake.
Just kidding. However, we do actually have 2 little baby bunnies that seemed to survive the nest we found a few weeks back. Looked like 4 inside, but we only see 2 every day now. Oh? You don’t want to hear about these bunnies? What happened to the snake? Well, I’ll tell ya.
The snake survived fine, overnight, in the pillowcase, the first night into Sunday. We had discussions with family about who to call, what to do, where the snake should go, blah blah blah. We had some nature preserve ideas, natural habitat locations, and I did more research on the internet to find a decent solution we could all live with. We had a pretty good plan in place, but when we woke up Monday morning, it seemed that nature was going to decide for us. The pillowcase was wet, but only in a certain spot, as if something tried to attack it and either the snake was now dead, or it defended itself and released liquids of some defensive sort. I don’t really know enough so I thought, dead. I got gloves, cause, ewww, and when I picked up the bag to untie the cord the snake was rattling and angry. But alive. So we let it out nice and slow like they say to, and it calmed right down. I was able to hold it and inspect it and it looked OK. But, it definitely could not stay in a pillowcase, inside of a plastic tub, in a backyard, for anymore days or nights. Based on more research and a few phone calls, the best course was to let it go in its closest natural habitat. The snake is one of our Illinois snakes, and it is considered mostly passive as far as wild snakes go. And they move around at night in the summer. So, maybe it just got really lost. We have, well, let me say, we had, a wild, wooded area right at the end of our block-set mere weeks ago. But after several episodes of flooding, the town, or county, or whoever, leveled all the trees, bushes, grass, etc., and created a retention/detention pond-type area. It was quite dense and wild. It had coyotes. We saw them over the winter. At any rate, they’re all gone now. The land is flat and I’m sure the animals that didn’t get killed outright, moved themselves out asap. And maybe our little friend finally worked her way over to our backyard looking for shelter. Or she was just passing through and just wasn’t fast enough. OR. She’s been hanging out in our backyard for god knows how long because of all the wood we had piled around and since we moved some of it in our clean-up attempt she had to move too, but we just never saw her until the other day. Eck. We could have been sitting and standing near her for days. Or weeks. Eeesh. Let’s not think about that though. Let’s think about this instead: The nice thing about living in the suburbs is we live very close to, “the end of the suburbs”, which is basically open land and fields and forest preserves. We picked the best one that had everything: Prairie-like land, woods, marshy swamp area, and water. And not visited or populated by many people. Some areas see lots of traffic, the one we picked has very little, in general and by comparison. We drove over there Monday, nice and early. No people. took a walk deep into the back, a nicely wooded and flat area, where the secondary, smaller pond is, and let her go along the tree line. It’s a good spot. Lots of space for a young snake. (We have been thinking juvenile, totally based on color and patches, via the internet again. I could be completely wrong of course. Male. Old. Dying. Who knows.) Anyway this is her new home:
We let her out of the pillowcase, onto the ground, behind where we took the picture. Thick woods, away from the roads or parking areas, with that view across. She layed for a minute in the grass and the sun. And slowly slid into the trees. Then she was gone.
Stepping Up Our Wildlife Game
S is for snake! This little lady was laying right in front of our door last night when we got home from shopping at Target. I mention the Target part because we do not live in an area where this type of snake roams free. And truthfully I didn’t even see it. I apparently walked right over it. Stevie too. Mason started yelling from the door, “Are you kidding me?? Did you guys NOT see this giant snake sitting out here on the ground?? Are you kidding me??” I am paraphrasing for time. Add many more swear words and repeat 10 more times. I thought he was kidding. Nope.
Of course she slithered herself in between the outdoor plastic tub we have and the house. It was near dark when we found her and could not get a good look. She was rattling her tail and beating it against the ground and bricks while trying to move. So we thought rattlesnake. This is my night pic. The only one I could get:
Looks like a rattlesnake to me. Sounded like one too. So we called the police because we thought they need to know about potentially dangerous animals. They do. BUT. This isn’t really in their scope. They sent an officer who helped us move the tub so we could catch it. We did. Put it in a plastic bin and then into a pillowcase. Left it outside by the garage. Then went to the internet to try and identify. Success! I feel kind of smart too since that is a crappy picture and memory is not as good as you might think when you are terrified that a rattlesnake is going to bite you or try to crawl into your house. Our pretty little snake though, seems to be a Fox Snake. Often mistaken for the rattlesnake in Illinois. Often. Quick FYI’s and possible, relevant, future knowledge, you might need too someday:
Rattlesnake: Similiar colors, but, with a lighter enhancing outline around the dark pattern. And shaped like bow-ties. Thinner in the middle.
Fox Snake: Darker, rectangular pattern with light background. Picture proof obtained.
Rattlesnake: The rattle on the end.
Fox Snake: No rattle, but tries to mimic the rattle, by vibrating the tail just like a rattlesnake. Yep. True that. It rattled that rattleless tail alot to scare us. But, no rattle. Also confirmed via pictures.
Rattlesnake: Slit eyes with vertical pupils. Vertical. Up and down. Very scary looking.
Fox snake: Round eyes. Round pupil. You can see her pretty eyes in the above pic. And here. We really got in there this morning with the picture taking.
Rattlesnake: Light bottom. Similar coloring to top.
Fox Snake: Yellow bottom. Or orange. Could not confirm that until today. Yellow.
Both snakes are available in various lengths, but the Fox Snake is 3-5 feet. Ours is prob 4 feet.
The head is lighter in color, like the pattern gets blurry or smeared, whereas the rattlesnake head keeps the pattern same as the body.
And constricting. Bites for defense, but not poison. The internet claims it doesn’t hurt. Hmm. That will remain unconfirmed. Eats mice and rodents. It’s a sub species of rat snake I guess. Not aggressive unless attacked or threatened. Also, most likely female, based on size. We are just going with it. We played with her for quite awhile this morning and she never attacked. She did try and constrict and curl and keep trying to get out of the bin, so I picked her up bare handed and was able to look at her closely and then put her back into the pillowcase without physical harm.
A few phrases come to mind: “Snake charmed.” They do have a mesmerizing magnetic effect that makes you want to keep them and touch them. “If it was a snake it would have bitten me.” I NEVER even saw the damn thing laying straight and flush against the house. Camouflage in action. “Snake wrangling.” We were quite hilarious and ridiculous last night chasing that girl all around the house trying to pick it up with rakes and sticks. Little did we know we could have just grabbed it. But in our defense it was pretty “strikey” last night until we calmed it down.
At any rate, I posted it on Facebook for anyone to have. We can’t keep it, but we won’t kill it or let it loose somewhere. Could be a pet that got free, because it is not really indigenous to our particular location. One more interesting factoid: It is unlawful to catch, keep or kill this snake in Iowa. Endangered I think. Protected maybe. Mason found that info. There are like, 39 different kinds of snakes in Illinois at any one time, (4 are poisonous), and we get an out-of-towner. Seems funny. And don’t worry, I’m not going to just give it to anybody. It’s not food for something else or material for shoes or purses. If no one legitimately can take it and care for it properly, I am calling a private owned pet store we know of–that only deals in fish and reptiles–to see if they want it or can at least take it and fine a home for it. No animals will be harmed in the making of this post.
So, that was our night. We have to go to a grad party now (Yay Jesse!! High School Over!! College Bound!!) and prob won’t be back until dark again. I cannot wait to see what will be hanging outside the back door later on! The lost reptile wildlife of suburban Chicago must know we specialize in taking care of fish and turtles and are hoping to expand the family with snakes. What will it be tonight? I am hoping alligator! Or crocodile! Either way, it’s going to make an awesome photo gallery tomorrow! Last shot because I have one more picture I want to use.
just shy of pretty 