More and more critters ...

I didn't realize how much I missed being closer to nature while I was living in the UK. Nature for those six years consisted mostly of seeing bunches of bunnies and a few foxes and once in a while a deer out on the golf course. Even though we're living in a relatively heavily populated area here in Texas, we have wooded empty lots on both sides, woods behind us on the other side the golf course across a drainage canal and more woods a block away out our front door. We get to see lots of animals. I love it. I wrote in my last post about 'big guy' that crawled across our backyard a couple weeks ago. The snake made one return visit to our yard a couple days later, then last week my neighbor told me he'd killed the snake. The snake had curled up under a bush in his front yard near the driveway. He has three dogs and all of them were overly interested in seeing what this big hissing thing was in their yard ... dogs not being overly bright. So, neighbor killed the snake. I was sad, but could understand. Neighbor also relayed how, just after he'd moved in, a delivery guy was coming up his drive and a snake laying under the same bush had snapped out and bitten the man's pant leg ... fortunately only the pant and not the real leg. I guess that would've made me a bit snake-averse also.

Then a couple days ago a wide-eyed Wife comes to me at the breakfast table breathlessly saying, "Snake. Snake on the porch. Right by front door. Snake, Bobby. Snake by the front door. Snake." I quickly deduced we had another snake to deal with.

I peek out the front door and happily coiled up in the corner of our front porch is a miniature version of 'big guy' ... OK, not miniature, but at least smaller. It's relatively warmer on the bricks that were heated by the setting sun the night before. I can't tell if it is a cottonmouth water moccasin like the big one we saw. The coloring is similar but the pattern is much more clear and his head is not as arrowhead shaped. I can't see any pits under his eyes, sign of a pit viper, but no matter; I'm treating him like he's the world's most deadly.

Shoes on, jeans on, two garden rakes in hand, I gingerly open the front door. "Lil' guy" takes no notice. I give him a poke with the rake and he glares at me. I give him a push and he reluctantly crawls along the wall to the opposite corner and curls up again. I push him toward the front step with the rake. He starts to go then doubles back toward his original place. I'm not having it. I push him onto the drive. He decides OK, I'll curl up under the azaleas in front. He damn near disappears in the shadows. I'm not having it. I poke and prod from a rake's length away. He crawls next to the house and he's getting pissed. Whap. He bites the rake in a flash. Whap. Bites it a second time. Then coils back up against the house and glares at me again. I poke him a couple more times and try to lift him with one rake onto the other. Whap again, but he crawls into the grass on the side of the house and again hunkers down -- tongue whipping in and out. I can tell he's thinking, "Put the rakes down you chicken-sh--, mudder-lover. I'll show you who can poke who." He just refuses to move, but after five minutes of increasingly brave pushes and prods he crawls off into the vacant lot next to the house. It was a bit more excitement than I'd really bargained for on a Friday morning, but still ... I found it pretty cool. And, yes, I check out the window before I open the front door now.

Even neater was a tale from snake-killing neighbor that we have a red fox that visits regularly. He comes at dusk most nights, walking along the cart path that runs behind our house. Of course, Wife is all gung ho about this. We have bbq chicken that night and puts the unused chicken skin out near the path. Then she returns and perches vulture-like on our breakfast nook chair waiting for Bre'r Fox. Darned if right at sunset, the fox comes trotting over the mounds across the fairway and then along the cart path. He stops like a statue and sniffs at our house then makes a bee-line for the chicken. He grabs the biggest piece and runs back across the fairway. We'd like to think that he's got a litter of pups back in the woods somewhere who are now munching on their first chicken skin. In five minutes he's back. He grabs the remaining skin and this time isn't sharing. He takes it to the other side of the fairway and gulps it down. Then he trots back along the path and into the vacant lot next to the house -- heading we think for the bigger woods across the road. Wife gets good pics of the whole thing.

We also are starting to see squirrels in our yard. They are not the world's brightest. If I break the corn off the cob and toss it in the grass they'll eat it, but haven't yet figured out that the whole ear is laying on the ground and they can serve themselves. Four blue jays on the other hand, have got it sussed out and will peck the kernels off the cob, take them to a branch and spend the next 90 seconds or so bashing it with their beaks to get to the good bits.

We've seen the red tailed hawk glide by a couple times. Once in a while he'll sit on a pole across the fairway. You can almost hear him say, "Here, mousy, mousy, mousy." We've not heard the great horned owl at night for quite a while. We have white egrets in the lake nearest to us. I also saw the blue heron fly by last night. Mocking birds are pretty regular visitors as are suicide prone doves. We've discovered that they're the ones that confuse reflections with the real thing. One committed suicide against our patio window -- much to Wife's teary consternation.

Now I know this can't match my cousin Dianne's wildlife stories from Anchorage ... moose in the backyard or maybe even Daughter's tales of the racoon army ... but for Houston, I'm likin' it. You can see a more complete pictorial essay on my FaceBook account by (hopefully) following this link: Houston Wildlife.