It appears that our home is becoming a wildlife preserve in what is rapidly turning into a subdivision – or something similar considering we live on a county road on the outskirts of a small town. My wife and I purchased our home from my father, so I have lived here since I was eight years old. When I was a young lad, I could walk out any of the doors in our house and see nothing but apple orchard in every direction. Our closest neighbor was about a half a mile away. About fifteen years ago, the apple orchard was leveled to make way for a corn field. About eight years ago, the corn fields started getting sold off for residential lots. Now I couldn’t throw an apple in any direction without hitting someone else’s house.
My wife and I own three acres and our yard is what I would consider a “country” yard. We don’t have a lot of fancy landscaping with topiaries and fountains or even a lot of mulch. We have grass and trees and a few large plants here and there. In one corner of the yard, we have a small copse of trees surrounded by a large growth of brambles and a patch of day lilies. There’s an out-of-control row of yucca plants on the south side of the house and an ancient persimmon tree in the back yard.
I say that we are becoming a wildlife preserve because of the number of animals that show up in our yard. Here is a list of what I saw in our yard on Saturday:
- 5 baby skunks
- 2 rabbits
- A turtle (actually he was on our porch)
- 2 barn swallows (they have a nest on another porch)
- A cardinal
- Some sort of lizard
- A chipmunk
- A stray cat with four kittens (hiding them near our AC unit)
If you want to count all of the other wild animals I saw that day:
- 3 deer
- A coyote
- A beaver
- 3 wild turkeys (not the alcoholic type)
Ergo, wild life preserve. So to all of our neighbors who wish I would plant a bunch of flowers and haul in a few metric tons of mulch, no thank you. I like my countrified yard just the way it is.
Mommy Cat!