A Blessing of Beasts

September 24, 2023 ~ mstturpin ~ 8 Comments

Welcome to the wildlife

We have been without a pet for almost three years. Our nerite snail slunk across the rainbow bridge shortly after we moved into our new home. The five gallon aquarium where he lived now sits empty inside the garden shed. Taking care of an animal requires a burden of care that we are not ready to assume. Not while we have the caretaking responsibility for Andrew’s mother. We were fortunate to buy a house already equipped with handrails and wood floors, wide doorways and an extra bedroom. But we found the best blessing in our backyard.

We have frequent visitors to our garden.

Myrtle the box turtle – photo by Andrew Shaw

This is the second year we have been visited by a box turtle. Last year, after confirming her gender, we christened her Myrtle. Female turtles have brown eyes and their shells do not have a flare at the bottom. Males tend to have red eyes and flared shells. Box turtles are not endangered, but they are listed as “vulnerable” as their habitats are shrinking. If you find one in your yard, don’t try to relocate them as they are territorial. Andrew and I believe Myrtle lived here near our creek long before we met with a realtor. We are happy to see her when we find her strolling through our flowers.

Green anole enjoying the bugs – photo by the author

A multitude of little green lizards lurk among the plants. We call them all Jake. They are most likely all related and don’t seem to mind sharing that moniker. If I approach slowly they will allow me to offer them a dried meal worm. This, I feel, is an adequate reward for their hard work clearing the insects from our vegetables.

After a late summer rain finally soaked our yard, I found dozens of very tiny toads hopping across the mulch. Each one is barely the size of my thumbnail but they have an impressive jump when startled. I can empathize. The toad in the image above can be found in the center of the bottom third of the photo. If you can’t find him here is another pic of one I found on our walkway.

As summer ends, we keep the fallen leaves and brushy plants in the garden. Less work for us and more places for our wildlife to shelter when winter arrives. The lantana in particular has been a colorful home to bunnies and a draw for butterflies and bees.

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” –John Muir

The Places We Go When We Look for Love

July 3, 2023July 3, 2023 ~ mstturpin ~ 1 Comment

Photo by the author. Edited with the Waterlogue App

Summer is the season of love – for Texas tarantulas. Despite having eight appendages, they have no opposable thumbs and no way to access a special spider dating site. Like a shy single guy, the males venture out as the sun sets, searching for that one special arachnid lady. He must make a hasty love connection as the male tarantulas only live seven to eight years, while the females can live up to the ripe old age of twenty to twenty-five.

Photo by the author – male tarantula spotted at Arbor Hills Nature Park, Plano Texas

He hunts for his special love by scent, tracking a possible mate to her burrow. Once there, he taps on the fine webs at the entrance and hopes she’ll respond by swiping right in spider fashion. If the answer is yes, perhaps they’ll go out to dine on a fine meal of crickets before or after the romantic hook-up. However, if the female is not in the mating mood, she is apt to make a meal of her suitor instead. Either way, someone will have a nice dinner.

Photo by the author – Arbor Hills Nature Park, Plano Texas

I met Andrew, my husband, at Arbor Hills Nature Park. We had connected on a dating site and arranged our first date online. No need for a scent trail, I spotted him holding a Frisbee as he stood in a field near the parking lot.

Photo by the author – the creek at Arbor Hills

Over the next few years we visited the park often, eventually sharing an apartment, our own cozy burrow, next to the nature area.

Two years ago we bought a house and moved farther away from the park, too far to walk or drop in for night time strolls. Three weeks ago, before the summer heat turned the sidewalks to griddles hot enough to melt the rubber soles of our shoes, Andrew suggested an evening stroll at Arbor Hills. “The tarantulas might be out already,” he said.

Photo by the author – thistles and flowers

We arrived at dusk, at the last of the golden hour, right before the sky turned from blue to twilight lavender. Carrying flashlights, we hiked along the concrete trail that wound three miles through the park. In past visits we had often encountered the palm-sized, furry, brown female tarantulas. They crawled across the paths like something from a science fiction/horror flick, scurrying along on their own spidery missions.

Photo by the author – mushrooms around a tree stump

“When will they be out?” I asked Andrew, as we drew near the back of the park.

“Look in the grass beside the trail. We’ll see the males first.”

A circle of mushrooms, a tiny Stonehenge, stood tucked in the dry grass. Andrew was the first to spot the tarantula.

He emerged from the weeds and leaves and crawled onto the trail in front of us. Not monstrous at all, the tarantula weaved side to side along the concrete, like a bar patron leaving at last call. I snapped pictures and waved as he set out, determined to find love. I hoped he would find a mate that night, or if not, that he would keep searching. Arbor Hills was, after all, a good place to start.

The Mob Rules Our Garden

June 19, 2023June 19, 2023 ~ mstturpin ~ 6 Comments

An adventure in unintended consequences

We installed the owl house with the goal of attracting a predator to our yard. Months back, we’d been overrun by a mischief of rats. They flooded our backyard every evening – a scurrying gray sea of rodents. Winter arrived and the tide of rats receded. Then, in late spring, we received our first resident owl. At first, Andrew and I rejoiced, happy to have our own rodent assassin on hand if the little buggers returned. Would we be blessed with owlets?

Excited, we broke out the binoculars. Andrew grabbed his camera and zoomed in for a portrait. With a creek bordering our property, we never want for wildlife. We were blissfully unaware of the consequences of inviting a bird of prey into our little sanctuary. After all, we had observed bobcats, raccoons, and possums wandering through our garden. I rely on a squadron of little green lizards to keep unwelcome bugs at bay.

Along our sidewalk, toads alert on night patrol wait for juicy June bugs to stumble into their path.

Not long after the owl first revealed itself, a chorus of squawks, chitters, and shrill whistles rose from our yard like a concert from an out of tune orchestra. Our visitor ducked back into the cover of the wooden house.

“What are they doing?” I waved at the flock of jays – a blur of blue feathers dive bombing the owl house.

Andrew stated the obvious. “They don’t like the owl.”

And no wonder. I realized we had placed the bird house directly overlooking our feeders. The ones where every morning a queue of owl-bite-sized wrens, chickadees, and finches appeared. Not so good for the victims, but a perfect opportunity for the bird of prey. We had installed a hotel room with a complementary breakfast buffet.

Andrew and I joined in the ruckus, jumping and waving our hands while yelling “Shoo! Shoo!” The owl, unimpressed, poked his head out now and again to glare at us. Our songbirds – blue jays, cardinals, and chickadees – continued to squawk and dive bomb the bird house. This behavior is known as “mobbing” and occurs when birds feel threatened by a predator. They band together to harass the intruder. This continued throughout the day. The mobbing behavior reminded me of the short story The Birds by Daphne Du Maurier. Most people remember the Alfred Hitchcock movie based on the story. “We better remember to keep the feeders filled,” I told Andrew.

At last, at dusk, with the mob dispatched to their night time roosts, the owl emerged. He flew to the creek for a quick drink, then disappeared into the trees. We haven’t seen an owl since then, but we hear them sometimes. Possibly they are sharing the bad review of our noisy bed and breakfast.

Time Travel in Ladonia Texas

March 5, 2023March 6, 2023 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

This past weekend Andrew and I drove out to the Ladonia Fossil Park. We’d been there before, during Covid. I remembered the solitude and peacefulness of strolling beside the North Sulphur River.

I had delayed a return trip, due to my terror of the steps leading down to the river. When we’d last visited, I’d resorted to scrambling along beside them down the slope to the water. Fear of breaking a hip overcame any insult to my dignity.

Now, however, the Fossil Park has moved upstream from the old location and they’ve installed a concrete ramp. If I stumbled on the ramp, I would roll on down the concrete until my journey ended at the mud pit below.

While Andrew set up to dig through a pile of loose rock, I wandered off on my own, enjoying the burble of the water beside me and the warmth of the sun on my back. Every now and then bursts of laughter drifted past from a group of children wading upstream. Scuffing my shoes through the gravel, I hoped to find something interesting. This area was once covered in water, an ancient sea filled with sharks, mosasaurs, oysters, and cephalopods dating back to the Cretaceous period, 145 million years ago.

It takes a sharp eye to spot the fossils, tucked as they are amongst the ordinary bits of quartz, shale, and dirt. But if you take wonder in small things, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you find.

I picked up a rock, worn slick and rounded as a peach by the river.

I discovered other things too, bits of petrified wood and bone, shells and imprints of shells, cemented forever in hardened clay.

I traced the curve of a shell, marveled at the smooth lines of petrified wood, and wondered at the lace-like pattern in a bit of bone. What a miracle that these things have persisted, so many millions of years. Not everything leaves such a trace behind. Sometimes, that’s a good thing.

A Lovely Home with a Wonderful View

September 11, 2022 ~ mstturpin ~ 6 Comments

I dumped a shovel of dirt over the body. The corpse in question, a dead rat, stared at me with a glazed eye before I covered it with a quart of potting soil. Miracle Grow, guaranteed for beautiful blooms. I hope nothing sprouts from this planting.

The rat expired less than a foot from where I’d been digging that morning. I wondered if I’d accidentally clonked him with the shovel as I set out the milkweed plant. Or maybe he’d nibbled on the fresh addition. I’d read that milkweed was poisonous, but I didn’t expect such a fast-acting result.

Of all the solutions to our rat problem, we decided the best answer would be owls. No harmful chemicals, no grisly traps to empty, nothing but the swoop of wings and a quick death to rodents. After Andrew ordered the owl house we discovered it most likely wouldn’t be inhabited until next spring, during nesting season.

“We’ll hang it now in case they decide to move in early,” Andrew said.

My husband is fearless. I’m afraid of climbing heights greater than four feet from the ground, crawling through small spaces, and purchasing things on credit. I admire anyone who is brave enough to scamper up a sixteen-foot ladder. However, someone has to stand at the bottom and hold the ladder steady. I felt the owls would be perfectly happy with a home half as high in the tree, but Andrew disagreed.

Our vacant owl house – Photo by the author

I stood there, clutching the shaking ladder, while Andrew scurried up, carrying the owl house and a drill. My mother believed that owls were bad luck. When she was a child, her family had lost two homes to fires. “We heard an owl calling on the roof both times,” she told me. I felt the blaze was more likely because of a faulty chimney or bad wiring, and maybe the owl was just trying to warn them.

The owl lodging secured in place, Andrew climbed down the ladder. I had to admit, now that he was safely at ground level, the house looked nice and snug, high in the tree.

We had a little chickadee investigate the structure, but so far, no owls. At night, though, we can hear their trilling hoots as we stroll through our neighborhood. A creek winds down the back of our property, and native trees crowd along the bank. “It’s a lovely home, perfect for raising a family,” I entreat the birds, “with a wonderful view.”

I have a story on Vocal, inspired by owls. As a bonus, there’s also a dead rodent. You can read it here: A Death Redeemed.

Dealing with Triffids and Other Creeping Horrors

August 26, 2022 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

*The Devil’s Ivy at home on the hearth – Photo by the author*

I learned the other day that Pothos is also called Devil’s Ivy. The poisonous nature of its leaves inspires that name, surely undeserved. Pothos are very hard to kill. I can testify to their hardiness. During the lock down days of Covid, I abandoned a pot of ivy. Left to fend for itself in my office cubicle, the plant went two months with no water. I found the poor thing shriveled and dusty, its dry leaves scattered across the windowsill. I had at least left it with a decent view of the parking lot.

True to its name, the plant resurrected, and it is now determined to take over our fireplace hearth. Five years ago, I had one Pothos. Now I have eight. All started with clippings from that original pot. The vines can grow one foot every month. If my plants were sentient, they would take over the world.

*I think it is trying to reach our front door.* *Photo by the author*

The recent rains have revived our garden. The roses are once again blooming. During July and August, they wilted in the heat like a southern belle at a cotillion. Throughout the summer, only the okra and a strange weed flourished. I identified the odd specimen with the help of a phone app—marestail, also called horseweed. Flamboyant and exotic, it sprang up to bloom in clusters of delicate flowers on a tall, leafy stem. It became the center point of our flower bed. The sight of it, upright and waving its limbs in the breeze, brings to mind a horror movie of the 1960s – Day of the Triffids.

*Horseweed standing tall in our garden. Photo by the author*

The movie’s plot involves a meteor that crashes on earth, spreading alien plant spores and striking everyone blind. In the ensuing darkness, sentient ambulatory plants called Triffids take their creepy revenge on humankind. Although it would be ridiculously easy to outrun a walking plant, this film terrified me when I was a child.

My pots of devil’s ivy unfurl their vines like arms. Perhaps they reach for me as I sleep. Would they curl their lovely, poisonous leaves across my face and into my mouth? I hope my gentle Pothos has nothing but concern as it stretches across the hearth, down the bookcase, along the windowsill. It needs me. Who would water it if I was gone? The roots carry the memory of that lonely isolation.

I have replaced my fear of Triffids with other creeping horrors. Old age, pain, dementia, debt. These are the terrors that keep me up at night. I’d gladly exchange them, not for blindness, but for Triffids. Even my stiff hips could outrun a sentient, ambulatory plant.

A Mischief of Rats

August 7, 2022 ~ mstturpin ~ 5 Comments

The bunnies were cute until they began dining on my asparagus. Squirrels raided the bird feeders but they were cute and their antics fun to watch so we forgave them. A creek borders our back yard, making us a way station for all sorts of wild life. We’ve had raccoons knocking over the plants on the patio, flower beds disrupted by armadillos, and an aloof bobcat hiding behind the planters to spy on our birdfeeders. The neighborhood box turtle visited often enough that we researched her gender and named her Myrtle.

We enjoyed our status as open air zoo – tossing out sunflower seeds for the jays, peanuts for the squirrels and an occasional lettuce leaf for Myrtle. Then the rats arrived.

A clatter and rustle from the dark yard prompted us to flip on the patio light. There, exposed in the brief flash before they melted away in a wave of fur and long, skinny tails, we spied at least a dozen rats enjoying a late night snack on our birdfeeder. A plague of rats, a pack, a swarm – enough to send us stomping and yelling back to the safety of our living room.

Further horror ensued when my husband spotted one burrowing under our house. “They probably have a whole rat tunnel system under our foundation!”

We purchased pebbles and rock and filled in the holes while blotting out the image of stranded rats slowly decomposing among our plumbing pipes.

I wondered if we would have found them so despicable had they had the soft, fluffy tails of squirrels. The sight of those rats clinging to our birdfeeder reminded me of the movie Willard. It came out in 1971, when I was eleven years old. I saw it at the movie theater, probably on dollar night and with my friends. I don’t remember much about the plot, except that it involved revenge, and a lot of rats. The main character, a young man named Willard, formed a friendship with a pair of intelligent rats. There are many directions the movie could have taken from that point, but this is a horror movie, so I’ll just tell you the final scene involved a rat army led by their commander, Ben.

The odd thing about this movie, when I look back on it, is that I remember feeling sympathy for the animals and not the human characters. Strange how our perspective shifts when we identify with the monster.

We solved the rat issue by bringing in the bird feeder each night. I picture them gathering at the base of the pole where the feeder hung, wondering who took away their buffet dinner. The collective noun for a group of rats could be pack, plague, colony, swarm but they can also be called a mischief.

You can read about the movie Willard at the AFI Catalog site.

Willard inspired a sequel two years later – the movie Ben. This film featured a song by Michael Jackson. Try to listen to it and remember he is singing about a rat.

Communion with Cornmeal

July 14, 2022July 17, 2022 ~ mstturpin ~ 2 Comments

I come from generations of gardeners. When we moved into our house last year, it was too late in the summer for planting. I vowed an early start in the next season. This year, however, brought mostly failed experiments with container gardening. My tomatoes grew weary in the dry heat, dropping leaves and blossoming worth with small, wrinkled fruit. I tried summer squash – remembering the butter yellow vegetables my mother grew. My plants protested confinement in pots, however large. But one hardy vegetable flourished in the ten square feet I allotted it. Okra, that heat-loving Southern staple.

It’s one of the easiest plants to grow, and it makes an interesting addition to your garden. The yellow blossoms with their deep red centers reveal the plant’s place in the mallow family, a relative of the hibiscus. A little water, lots of sun, and you’re rewarded with hardy, heat-loving stalks and enough okra pods to share with your friends and family. Okra is best right after it is picked. The stuff you see in a grocery store most likely will be soft and wilted. If you don’t have a spot to grow it yourself, pick it up at a Farmers Market. Okra is delicious roasted. Boiled it makes a tasty thickener for stews and gumbo. My favorite way to cook it is to bread it in either corn meal or flour and fry it.

The blooms open in the early morning sun, around the time I set aside for harvesting the pods. Bees circle the plants, landing and picking up their fill of pollen while I brush aside the broad leaves and search for the tasty green okra. I’m growing Clemson Spineless – a kinder variety from the one I picked as a child in my mother’s garden. Those plants and their pods were covered in prickly spines that raised red welts on the tender flesh of my arms. The rash, however, was payment for the reward – plates of crunchy, cornmeal breaded and fried okra.

As I pick the pods, I can imagine the taste of the crispy chunks. Okra has a flavor that reminds me of cool green grass. It tastes like summer. I remember my mother, setting the table with fried okra and red slices of tomato. She pan-fried her okra in shortening with a little bacon grease mixed in for flavor. I cook mine in canola oil and skip the bacon grease. Like my mom, I use a cast iron skillet. Each bite I take I taste the past.

Leave the Right Trace

August 2, 2020 ~ mstturpin ~ 4 Comments

*Whispering Pines Nature Trail at Tyler State Park – Photo by the author*

I’ve been wondering, lately, what I’ll leave behind. What mark will I make on the world? Not that I’m planning to kick off anytime soon, but recent events have certainly brought that to mind. When you have to gear up for a Target run like you’re preparing for the apocalypse, it brings home the certainty of your own mortality.

*Mushroom Along the Trail – Photo by Andrew Shaw*

Andrew and I have determined the safest space for us is outdoors. We might encounter a snake, have to brush off a tick, or bring home a rash from poison ivy, but there’s little risk of inhaling a deadly virus, as long as we keep our distance from our fellow hikers. There’s plenty of room for all outside.

*Loblolly Pines at Tyler State Park* – *Photo by the author*

We traveled down Interstate 20, to Tyler State Park. As we grew closer to our destination, the earth beside the highway changed from the blackland prairie soil to the red clay dirt of East Texas.

*Hiking Trail at Tyler State Park* – *Photo by the author*

Like many of our beautiful national and state parks, Tyler State Park was constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the Great Depression. Andrew and I hiked along a trail and climbed steps laid into the ground over eighty years ago.

*Steps and Waterfall Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1938* – *Photo by the author*

Outdoor etiquette instructs us to be careful, to leave no trace when we hike. Our footprints on the trail, stamped into the dust, will be swept aside by the next traveler. We take nothing but peace from the space. As we trekked along, under a canopy of green, I thought what a wonderful trace the young men of the CCC had left behind.

How fortunate our land had Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president during that trying time. When FDR established the Civilian Conservation Corps, he created hope and opportunity, not just for the men who would lend their labor to creating a legacy that would live on past their lifetimes, but for all who would visit the parks in decades to come. The challenge then, for each of us, will be to examine our steps and determine what trace our actions will leave for future generations.