Category Archives: Animals

Driveway wildlife

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I saw this little beauty when I took the dogs out a few days ago.

It’s a green anole (anoles carolinensis), climbing the downspout on the corner of the house. They are active in warm weather, which we have been having, and live in trees. And, apparently, houses. I wasn’t sure I remembered the name, so I searched for “green and red lizard in Georgia” and immediately found it. The photo is not great because I took it with my phone and had to enlarge it quite a bit to see the red throat.

This was the scene two days ago when I took the dogs out (I don’t seem to go out unless it’s to take the dogs for a little walk).

Zoe did not notice the snake. Zeke was familiar with snakes and reacted strongly to them, but maybe Zoe has never had any experience with them. I took both dogs back inside so I could get closer for a photo.

This is a black rat snake. It didn’t move while we were outside, but when I went in for a moment, it got a little closer to the edge of the pavement.

I went back into the garage after taking this shot, but I peeped around the door. As soon as I went in, it slithered up against the liriope and disappeared.

This is from the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory:

“Rat snakes occupy a wide variety of habitats including rocky timbered hills, hardwood forests, river floodplains and swamp margins. They are commonly found in abandoned buildings and barns and are often the most common large snake in suburban areas.

Habits: Adult rat snakes primarily eat mice, rats, squirrels, and birds, as well as bird eggs. They are a common predator on wood duck eggs. Juveniles eat small frogs, lizards, and small rodents. Rat snakes are constrictors, and adept climbers that can scale brick walls as well as tree trunks. When frightened they often assume a “kinked” posture and remain motionless. They will vibrate the tail and expel malodorous musk.”

I like having snakes around, although the cats do a pretty good job of controlling rodents, as well as birds and lizards.

Health update: I continue to improve. I have regained a lot of the range of motion in my shoulder, despite a foolish attempt to get down on the floor to help Leah look for a pill she thought she had dropped. My knee is taking longer. I can walk with an almost normal gait, but I can bend my knee only a little past 90 degrees. I can walk up steps, but going down still stretches me calf a little more than is comfortable.

Leah has an appointment with her surgeon next week. She dreads having surgery again, but is ready for some relief from her almost constant pain. I think she’s as worried about how well I take care of the cats as she is the surgery itself.

Cat tails and a dancing dog

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A few years ago I posted about a problem with out cat Sylvester’s tail. We were worried that it was broken, but our vet thought it might only have been sprained (a sprained tail?). There was a possibility of an amputation, if it was dead.

Liam coincidentally commented on my last post to ask what had happened to Sylvester’s tail. The answer is that he recovered fairly quickly and has had full use of his tail ever since; it’s fluffy, and it sheds, and holds copious quantities of dust and debris, just like a cat’s tail is supposed to. It looks normal and appears to be fully functional.

In the last few months, a new stray has appeared around our house. It started prowling and snooping on the front porch. We didn’t recognize it, and we certainly don’t need another cat, so I chased it away. It’s very careful, so any time it sees me it hightails it down the driveway and then up towards a neighbor’s house. Our neighbors had an outdoor cat that they fed on their porch, so I assumed the new cat was staying up there and eating that cat’s food, only coming down to our house to compare cat food brands.

I used the past tense because our neighbors moved away a couple of weeks ago, taking their cat (we sincerely hope) and its outdoor food. Now the new cat comes up onto our porch fairly often to eat the food we put out for our two outdoor cats. If it sees us, it hightails it back towards out neighbor’s house. It must have found some place to sleep, maybe under a porch or in one of the out buildings.

The cat looks well fed so far. It’s very skittish, so we haven’t been able to get a good look, and certainly not a photograph. Here’s the coincidence — this new cat has a deformed and shortish tail. When I got a good look at it a few nights ago I immediately thought about Sylvester’s tail of woe. I had not thought about that in years.

The cat is mainly gray, with short ears. Its tail is kinked, and about three-quarters the length of a normal cat tail. It seems to be a fighter, which is no surprise; it is, after all, a cat.

We hope it finds a home somewhere away from us. We have talked about trying to trap it and find it a home, but it might be too feral for that. Plus, if we set a trap, we are more likely to catch one of our own cats. I doubt that it will ever let us near.

Now, as to that dancing dog.

When we come home from running an errand, both dogs meet us at the back door. Zoe comes right to the door so she can wipe her nose on our legs, but Sam hangs back at the far side of the kitchen, where he does a little dance until we can get to him to give him some pets.

It turns out he’s a tap dancer.

I’m not sure how well you can hear his tapping, what with all the dog tags jingling and general commotion, but it seems to be clearest at the end of the clip. I think he has real possibilities.

Black and white and bluets all over

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One of the things I like least about cats is that they are little killers. Mollie regularly brings lizards into the house, either previously killed or saved for later killing. Chloe brought a young squirrel onto the front porch, which after allowing it to age a little, she began to eat from the head down. Sylvester has brought several killed animals into the garage. This is what he brought us Tuesday.

It’s a black and white warbler. They are ground nesters, which probably explains how Sylvester found and killed it.

I know that cats are hunters and killers by nature; it’s what they do. I still don’t like it. The cats are lucky Leah is here.

I am not a birder, so I had to look this bird up. Cornell University has some nice resources for bird information. I found some audio files for the pileated woodpeckers we have around here. Now they have an app for identifying birds from photographs. I had already figured out that the bird was a black and white warbler, but I downloaded the app and the bird database for the Southeast to recheck.

On a more pleasant note, I saw some tiny flowers on my morning dog walk.

It looks kind of like the Milky Way.

These are bluets. I see them fairly often around the mountain, but this was a large enough patch that it caught my eye from a distance. They can be propagated from seed or by transplanting. I think I’ll try to bring some into our yard somewhere.

And, on the pain and suffering front, I had pre-op visits to my orthopedic surgeon and the hospital on Tuesday. I am scheduled for rotator cuff repair Friday morning. I have mentioned this to a few people, and everyone who has had rotator cuff repair has warned me that it’s the worst, very painful. I had my left rotator cuff repaired about 11 or 12 years ago. As I recall, it was not particularly painful. I needed pain medication for a couple of nights immediately after surgery, but after that, even the physical therapy was not bad. I hope to repeat that experience with my right shoulder.

Unfortunately for me, I am right handed, so hanging my right arm from a sling for weeks is going to be an inconvenience. Leah and I have not figured out yet how the dogs are going to get their walks. Zoe is a real plow horse on our walks, and Sam likes to tie me up with his leash by walking circles around me. Neither of those is a good fit for someone with a healing shoulder injury.

I’m sure everything will work out just fine. One way or another.

Little lizard

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Mollie brought this little lizard into the house Saturday afternoon.

It’s small, probably only about an inch and a half long. I have seen a few young lizards like this on the driveway. It was only a matter of time until Mollie caught one.

This one seemed unharmed. I scooped it up and took it outside. I released it on an old oak stump not far from the house.

It’s an Eastern Fence Lizard. I think it’s probably a male, and probably only weeks to a couple of months old. Adults are around four to seven inches long.

They have a fairly large range, from northern Florida to New Jersey and New York in the north, and from the Atlantic coast as far west as Colorado and Wyoming.

They are arboreal, although they are so well camouflaged that they must be hard to see on a tree. The imported fire ant can attack and kill these lizards as well as their eggs. I hope my usual practice of killing every fire ant nest I find helps these little creatures.

Cicada song

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It’s cicada season here in Georgia. They are everywhere in the woods. Their song is loud, droning and constant during the day. At night the crickets take up the task of constant song, and the cicadas do intermittent solos. If you are the kind of person who needs complete quiet at night, you can’t sleep with the windows open.

As for me, their sound tends to fade into the background, and I mostly don’t notice it. When I walked the dogs on Sunday, we went all the way down the mountain and then back to the top before I suddenly woke up to the sound. It was hard to believe that I didn’t notice it before. I recorded this video strictly for the sound.

The buzzing was amazingly loud. What you can’t tell from the video sound is that the buzzing seemed to circle around me. There was a constant sound all around, but overlaid on that was a louder buzz that seemed to circle around us. I don’t know whether it was real or an illusion.

The cicadas this year are almost certainly the annual type. I think, based on the images here, that ours are Southern Resonant/Great Pine Barrens Cicadas. Georgia also has 13-year and 17-year cicadas, none of which were due to emerge this year.

Cicadas spend most of their lives underground, eating away at grass and tree roots. When they emerge, they climb up a vertical surface and moult, leaving their exoskeletons behind to be picked off the bark of pine trees by little boys.

They die soon after mating. We occasionally find one in its death throes on the driveway. The dogs are fascinated by them. They nose them and then when they start buzzing, they want to eat them like crunchy little treats. Mollie the cat also sometimes brings them in, usually unharmed. Then we have to push the dogs out of the way so we can scoop them up and toss them back outside.