It’s spring, and things are alive in the suburbs.
Yes, there are the gorgeous flowering trees. This is a dogwood tree in my front yard. The magnolia, red leaf, and crab apple trees have been happy, happy in the backyard. I’ve been visiting the garden stores and drooling over the new plants.
But I had to pull off a tick off the back of Ian’s neck with tweezers yesterday. The bugger hung on to his skin and put up quite a fight. Asshole.
I also almost hit a wild turkey on the way to work yesterday. It was huge and ugly and stupid. It just ambled onto the road just as I was accelerating for the ramp to Route 17. I had to come to a complete halt, so the dumb thing could slowly stalk across the road. I briefly considered a Grand Theft Auto slam, but I didn’t want it to stink up my car.
Apt. 11d 
Ah, the wild turkeys. A fairly recent return to the NYC suburbs. A couple of years ago, I was thoroughly shocked when I had to dodge a couple meandering along the shoulder of the Palisades Parkway.
Have you seen any of the stories about the wild turkeys that have infested Boston?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6504117
Crazy.
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We have just about all the nature we can stand in Texas, too. I’ve come to some sort of terms with the big 2-3″ long American cockroaches (AKA tree roaches). Intellectually, I realize that they are not an indoor pest, even though they may occasionally bumble in and skitter under the washer or dishwasher, or turn up water-logged and dead at the bottom of the washer. Emotionally, I’m still in need of smelling salts and my fainting couch when I see one. There’s a yearly cricket epidemic, which is a lot less cute than it sounds. Mosquito season is just starting, but fortunately the local ones are slow and stupid, not like the silent and cunning mosquitoes of the Pacific Northwest. Fire ants make open-toed shoes risky, and a number of local stores devote a whole wall to chemicals to them. Near the interstate at the right time of year, there are hundreds, thousands of grackles (a bluish black bird) hanging out on wires and roofs. We also have black widows and brown recluse spiders, which are the only genuinely dangerous local animals, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one.
On the cuter side of the spectrum, we have lots of geckos during the warmer months, and my husband is now adept at gently peeling them off our popcorn ceiling and sending them back outside. I’ve seen blue jays and cardinals in our backyard and around town. There are also turtles in the waterways.
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Nature sucks ass. I may feel better about nature once the poison ivy rash clears-up. It has been two weeks, two doctor visits, and two prescriptions, but my arm is still a itchy, festering mess. A neighbor just told me where the poison ivy is, so this Saturday I fight back.
“Hello Mr. Ivy. Yep, you’ve managed to evolve one very effective defense mechanism there. I won’t touch you again. Of course, thanks to the Monsanto corporation, I don’t have to. Say hello to my new friend, Round-up.”
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Did you guys hear about the cougar who bungled into the city of Chicago and ended up shot by the cops? (The cops had evidently had plenty of practice with pit bulls.) I work in a first-ring suburb of Chicago, and between my house in the city and the office I regularly see (and smell) flattened skunks. Iwwww.
I actually love the “nature finds a way” aspect of all this. Gives me some hope that we’ll find our way out of this climate change mess yet.
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By 6 pm, my backyard is a veritable zoo. I have two bird feeders and am visited by LBBs and LGBs (Little Brown Birds and Little Gray Birds) and chickadees, house finches, starlings (bleah), and cardinals and blue jays. I have a lovely cardinal couple who enjoy my hospitality.
Then we have the bunnies. Lots of them. So very cute. We used to have a woodchuck, but my husband was concerned about its underground burrows when one of the kids put a foot through one, so he filled them in and was non-chemically discouraging.
In the past we’ve also found baby catbirds in a nest, a painted turtle, a long way from its home in a pond a few streets away, and a star-nosed mole, which is one of the most disgusting looking creatures ever. Gives me the willies.
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Amy, have you seen the cockroaches fly yet? That’s the best. Especially when they fly, like, at you. Our Louisiana models occasionally did just that.
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Doug,
I’ve heard that some of these bugs fly, but I’ve never seen it, and I don’t think I can cope with that information right now.
By the way, there’s a volume called the “The Texas Bug Book” that I’ve thought about getting. The Austin American-Statesman review over at Amazon describes it with the following praise:
“If you plan on ever stepping outside, or staying inside, or going to bed, Texas Bug Book is a wealth of information you can’t possibly live without.”
When we were first weighing the move to Texas, the bugs were a big negative. On my first visit, I walked through a couple of disused rental houses littered with the corpses of American roaches and was thoroughly squicked out. I’ve been pleased to discover that at least half the year is blessedly bug-free, and the other half of the year is the price you pay for a mild winter.
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One of the positive aspects of moving from Texas was getting away from those pesky bugs. Cockroaches were the most disgusting, but scorpions and tarantulas provided their own type of horror.
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