At Home with Nature
by Reida Kimmel



Since August our mornings and evenings have been disturbed by very loud noises. At first, since the front door is often open in the summer, we assumed that the frog under the deck was a skilled ventriloquist. However, it soon became apparent that the frog was actually in the living room. But where? We worried about his being eaten by cats or dying of thirst. We put out a saucer of water and I gave up vacuuming under the bookcase and behind the stereo speakers.

One morning Chuck finally found the frog in the Christmas cactus pot. Our visitor was removed to the outdoors and I cleaned up the copious amounts of poop on the lower window ledge. (I suppose if I were a better housekeeper, I would have seen this clue.) The house-Hyla had different ideas about its abode, however, and as I write, he/she has been removed from the livingroom twice more. Perhaps now that the cooler weather has come and the door is closed more often, the frog will be discouraged and find a more suitable home.

For the last month we have had piles of logs, our winter's firewood, in the yard awaiting sawing, splitting and stacking. The soft wood log pile was just high enough to allow the Douglas squirrel complete access to the sunflower seed-filled bird feeder. He amused us all as he feverishly transferred the seeds from the softwood pile to the hardwood pile where he stored them in a hollow log. Last weekend, when Chuck split the last of the wood, he found a large quantity of sprouted sunflower seeds in one log (poor squirrel) and a salamander (Aneides for sure) in another log--nice rewards for the hard work. The salamander now is in an old growth stump on our property line, and the squirrell is launching himself successfully from the oak tree to the birdfeeder. A large flock of geese flew south over our house yesterday morning. The vultures have gone. Now if it would just rain and rain and rain.

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