The Great Outdoors

We live in the wilderness--ok, not really. But there is a mountain in the backyard. Because of this beautiful mountain, we enjoy watching the bunnies on the hill, and we have nice trees and shrubs to look at.

With the good comes the bad though, and we have rattle snake habitat in the back yard too--a little close for comfort! We hear (and sometimes see) coyotes too. We also have (harmless) lizards living in and around the backyard. In fact, I think a family of them live behind a bush in my backyard.

Lately, we've heard all kinds of nocturnal noises--tramping around on the hill and AWFUL screeching or screaming. It's always at night and it always scares me almost to death. The neighbors think it's a bobcat--maybe hunting the bunnies? It gives me pause though, when I'm lying in bed, fighting to get to sleep, and I hear something roaming about in the foliage--is it IN my backyard? Is it on the hill? Is it animal or human? These are GREAT questions at 1 am.



Last summer a lizard committed suicide by getting stuck in the panels of the garage door. I thought it was a snake and I was FREAKING out--only part of the tail was visible on the outside. But from the inside of the garage, I could see the squished and dearly departed lizard. My attitude is that they are free to be and roam, but OUTSIDE. Once you cross the threshold of my domain, you'd better be prepared for battle. And I have a photo of this event, but when I looked at it, I figured my readers don't need the gore.



I'm not quite that lenient on my views of snakes though. I'd prefer that they slither on THEIR side of the chain link fence and stay on the mountain. I've even bargained that I won't go in their habitat if they stay out of mine. But a California King snake did NOT get the memo on Saturday. It was in my neighbor's yard, and got chased into mine. The neighbor was kind enough to go looking for it, but CK decided that behind my shed was a great place to hang out. Now I don't know WHERE it is, and THAT'S also a great thought to have at 1 am. Oh, and this snake was about 4 feet long--no baby snake! So I haven't been in the backyard since Saturday. Robert says that the CK preys on rattle snakes, so I guess that's good. While our friend lives in OUR yard, a rattle snake won't last long--but I still vote for NO snakes!

With the good (or GREAT) comes the bad--that's how it always is. We're not moving just because of some wild life.