Lettuce Share

Deer in Florida are scrawny and scarce.  Deer in New York are robust and abundant. The latter can be a bit of a problem.  They total cars and decimate gardens.  This deer, in particular, is tormenting my mother.

The deer nibbles on her Hostas, poops under her apple tree and brazenly lounges in her front woods.  She’s tried using Milorganite, and she’s tried to physically chase the deer away.  Neither approach has been effective.  No exaggeration, this deer can be spotted morning, noon and night munching on apples in the front yard.  As a friend or family member of my mother, this is both ironic and hilarious because she hates animals.  For an extremely selfless and loving mother, grandmother, sister, and daughter, she is the most unlikely and absolute animal-hater I know.  She’s probably annoyed reading this, shaking her head saying, “I don’t hate animals,” meaning she doesn’t want to open a taxidermy shop because she enjoys the zoo, but she still has no use for them as pets or otherwise.  And as they say in New York, fuhgetaboutit when they mess with her garden.  

While my mother’s hatred may be unique, her predicament is not.  Deer are actually more menacing than cute.  They’re dangerous to drivers, and as their herds increase other animal populations decrease.  The former I know to be true because of first-hand knowledge; my brother-in-law is convinced by her scarring that I’ve met this deer before from behind the wheel.  The latter I know to be true because of the Cary Institute.  While we were hiking around the surrounding property we came across an enclosure in the middle of the woods, a large square of extra-tall chicken wire.  But this enclosure was actually an exclosure - rather than keeping anything in, it was designed to keep the deer out.  The data collected from the exclosure will be used to determine the environmental impact of deer and what the forest would look like without them.  Because deer are willing to devour just about anything at eye-level or below, large herds can wipe out the habitats of songbirds, insects and amphibians…oh, deer!

Babes abound in the garden lately.  I started noticing after finding this egg shell under the grapefruit tree:

To give you an idea of the egg’s truly tiny size, here it is next to an Eggland’s Best large egg.

Although the egg doesn’t seem tiny enough to be a lizard egg, in the few days since finding it, I’ve been spotting itty-bitty lizards everywhere.  They’re surprisingly cute with their bright eyes and stumpy little bodies.  This one is only about two inches from head to tail.

Check out those toes!  She reminds me of my black lab when he was a puppy.  Everyone used to say, “Oh boy, look at those paws!”  Bobo grew to be a hundred pounds.  Going off those two snaggle-toes in the hind, Little Liz’ should grow to be ten grams at least!

I love sweet and sour sauce, sour cream and Sour Patch Kids, but Surinam cherries are too sour for me.  So each year, they inevidably drop to the ground, smush all over the brick pavers and leave a huge mess.  Still, I love them. 

The fruit is festive as it ripens; tiny Chinese lanterns drip from the branches in clusters of red, yellow, orange, and green.  Then, when the fruit is at its ripest, the Mockingbirds descend. 

At this point, the brick pavers are thick with cherry goo and the bushes are nearly picked clean.  The birds must sense the end of the buffet line because every time I saw one today, it had a dark red cherry stuffed in its beak and didn’t fly away.  I felt a little like Snow White being in the proximity of those cherries.  I’ve never felt so accepted by a bunch of birds in my life.  There was a Mockingbird perched on the handle of the pitchfork, one on the compost bin and one on the fence. 

 ♫ With a smile and a song, life is just a bright sunny day ♫  -Snow White

Lukey will be playing the part of Sleepy from under the covers.

They’re hovering by the dozen and one literally bounced off my forehead this afternoon, so apparently it’s dragonfly season again!  Although it’s not quite sweltering yet, it’s hot enough for them. 

This one is a blue dasher dragonfly.

Another sure sign of summer are Rain lilies, quite possibly the most heat-tolerant bulb on Earth.  I never dig them up, and they multiply like crazy.  This one popped up in a barren square.

It wasn’t long ago I was Lamenting over Lizards… 

Lizards were neither here nor there. 

There were no lizards anywhere. 

Not in the garden, not in the house,

Not playing with the dog, not hiding with the mouse. 

But the sun returned and they’re back on the lam.

So I no longer miss lizards but tan, I am.

I found this one in a pot:

This one in a bag:

And these two (gasp) were having a shag!       

What a weird day in the garden…or should I say ominous…eerie…dismal?  I just don’t know!  A few weeks ago I hauled our punching bag out to the back patio.  The weather had gotten too nice to be working out next to the lawn mower in our crowded garage.  The bag is bright red and stands about 5-feet high.  This morning I found a dead Mockingbird next to it.  John came home during lunch and buried him.  When I got home this afternoon, I found another dead bird!  This one was in the rose garden - death by window.  It’s not the first time.  The punching bag, on the other hand, is new…two dead birds in one day is also new.  I don’t know what else to say about it other than that I drove very carefully back and forth from the office tonight and checked the calendar to see if it was a full moon.  It isn’t.     

My initial response to finding this mole cricket was EEEEEWWWW!  It’s so gross, and I had no idea what it was.  John had to identify it for me.  He knew right away, but I’ve never seen one before.  After a little internet research, it seems I’m not alone.  Mole crickets are common but rarely seen.  They burrow underground and are considered pests because they dig up lawns.  What it was doing in a box in our garage, I don’t know.  Hopefully, it was lost and alone.

Alone but not lonely, it is Valentine’s Day.  And since they can’t rely on their good looks, male mole crickets have developed a romantic side.  The go-to move of a mole cricket is a moonlit serenade.  They settle into their burrows at night and sing to their potential valentines flying overhead.  Sweet, isn’t it? 

It’s official.  I’ve turned some sort of corner and deep inside of me I am all Floridian.  I can’t believe I’m about to say this or that is it even possible to feel such an emotion, but I think I miss the lizards.?  I add the question mark because I’m still questioning it myself it’s so weird.  A native New Yorker, I once hurled a lizard across a room on an iron because it freaked me out that much - I just wanted it out of my hands!  Another time-and this one is really terrible, I feel bad enough and was very young and living in my first apartment by myself, so please don’t judge or send this link to PETA-I jumped on top of my bed with a mini ShopVac, threw the hose over the back of the bed where the lizard was, and shook it around until I heard a thwoop.  I told you it was terrible, but the residual guilt may be leading to the fuzzy feelings I’m experiencing now.  I have been actively seeking out lizards.  I look for them every day and can always find one, but that’s it.  I was bizarrely elated this morning to spot one without having to search.  She was sitting on the brick pathway but hid behind a croton as I neared.

She’s a brown anole - a common lizard throughout Florida.  Usually they’re everywhere around here - peeking through the windows, sunning on the pathways, and way too often creeping under the doors.  There’s normally one perched on the mermaid’s head but not today.

There have been various articles written about the cold snap affecting Florida’s wildlife - reports on floating fish, bobbing sea turtles, huddling manatees and even falling iguanas but not much on the lizards.  Exotic iguanas falling from the trees in Miami are bound to get attention, while the poor little lizards in our gardens are being ignored.  Hopefully, they’re still sleeping and not…the other thing.  Cold temperatures cause iguanas and lizards to fall into a deep sleep, and they lose their grip causing them to drop from trees, roofs, etc.  The only article I could find directly related to lizards was about a woman from Pompano Beach blowing a hairdryer on a couple of lifeless lizards on her porch; they perked right up…if only I had known!

I’m expecting a monarch metamorphosis at any moment in my laundry room!  It’s all happening so quickly!  This is yesterday’s chrysalis:

Here’s today’s chrysalis:

The pending butterfly birth has had me giddy since this morning - the air feels warmer, my Christmas slippers are perfectly broken in, the grapefruit are ripe, what a great day!  Or so I thought until the incessant squawking began to pierce through the sound of my new Phantom Planet CD.  Loud and persistent, it forced me to the back door, camera in hand.  Here’s what I found.

As if the sky alone wasn’t dreary enough, all the birds were black.  There were more than I could capture; flocks flew away with the sound of the door, but suddenly I’m chilly and my slippers feel snug.  Let’s hope my day doesn’t turn into this…

The bang was so loud that I immediately thought it was John’s boat crashing to the ground.  He keeps it propped up against the fence.  It’s a little 10-footer, but sounds much bigger when the wind blows it over.  But when I opened the side door, the boat was in place - bringing me to my question - what the *@#! was that???  I walked around the whole house and still no clue.  That was Monday.  Fast forward to this morning - I’m watering the plants in the Florida room and something on the window catches my eye…

Oh my God - that’s what caused the bang!  This isn’t the first time we’ve had an incident like this, and I’ve done my part to prevent them.  I haven’t washed a window in this house since spending the afternoon nursing a Mocking bird back to health.  The poor thing slid down the window and landed ass-up in a pot of Gerber daisies.  I didn’t think such a tiny animal could survive such an enormous impact.  It took him a good part of the afternoon to shake off the shock and fly away. I was forced to watch the recovery through the window. My rubber gloves and towering stature seemed to negate any bedside manner I was trying to achieve, but somebody had to pull his little head out of the dirt. As southern hospitality dictates, I laid out a hefty buffet of sunflower seeds and a dish of water before leaving.  He didn’t partake in either, but he did fly back up to his perch in the grapefruit tree.

Back to the latest bang - it was louder, and it happened two days ago!  I didn’t want to look, but this is all I found…

That’s one lucky bird!