Wilderness: Just Call Me Marlin Perkins

We have a cat who lives about half of his waking life on our porch here in south Georgia. He's not OUR cat; he belongs to somebody around here. We call him Homer (as in the Greek author of the Iliad, not Father of Bart). My daughter named him for his relentless meowing, which she believes are elaborate epics he wants to share. His friend Joan the cat sometimes stops by... she's Joan of Arc, named for her considerable courage. I observed her once blocking a hawk from swooping down on our neighborhood chicken. She and the chicken have been pretty tight buddies ever since.

I've owned this house on a residential street less than three blocks from the courthouse since 1993. It has become my personal wildlife sanctuary. I was thinking about it this morning, about how many different critters have lived here or just visited.

Wildlife I have loved watching in my yard includes:
- a deer who quietly wandered across the grass around 3 a.m. once
- bats around the pecan trees at dusk
- an eagle that landed on a large branch for a rest
- the frog that lives in the weeds I used to call a garden
- honeybees in the azalea bushes
- barred owls
- the little green lizards underneath the porch
- bluebirds and cardinals and thrashers
- compost-loving opossums
- butterflies and moths

Wildlife I have wished would move on (or finally did):
- the rat that crawled out of the fireplace and ate my Birkenstock
- the squirrels that tap dance in the attic
- fire ants
- giant man-eating mosquitoes
- termites
- clouds of gnats
- palmetto bugs and silverfish
- bedbugs (tea tree oil and lots of hot water did the trick)
- one mentally ill poodle who wandered away from my neighbor's house

I hope to move permanently to my other home in the mountains within a year. But the thought of leaving this place makes me nostalgic - in advance - for everything that south Georgia is to me.

Except for the gnats, mosquitoes, fire ants and the roaches. There are some things that I won't miss.

NTD