Bullfrogs and Butterflies

The first warm day of the first spring in our new house, I bounded outside to work in the garden. Then I promptly contracted Lyme disease and had to swallow antibiotics for nearly a month.

The second spring in our house, I was pregnant and deathly afraid of ticks bearing dreaded diseases. I knew antibiotics could have terrible effects on the tiny life in my belly. So this time around, my well-meaning husband put some kind of granule-type Ortho insecticide on the lawn. It completely wiped out all the ticks. It also wiped out all the fireflies, bees, butterflies, crickets, ladybugs -- you name it. It killed everything. For three years!

Worse still, the frogs in our backyard exhibited terrible deformities. Half-formed legs. Weird lumps. Missing eyes. Stumpy feet. They were ghastly.

Lately, the fireflies have been back and the frogs are looking healthy again. But now we have a toddler, and this year, my husband started worrying about ticks and mosquitoes again for her sake.

Looking at the frogs, though, I don't think we could ever put that nasty stuff down again. Tacitly, we've reached an understanding. No measure of peace of mind (or trying to avoid dosing a screaming, kicking baby with medicine) is worth missing out on nocturnal light shows or croaking amphibians. We'll just have to exert extra caution outdoors and slather on more bug-repellent.

Ladybugs, butterflies, lightning bugs, dragonflies, frogs -- they're small and plentiful and often go unnoticed -- until they're gone. Then one realizes how large a hole they leave.

I never thought I would grow attached to some frogs, but I have. I feel these little ones need me. More importantly, I feel that I need them, too.

I didn't have to use a zoom.

They sat so still. I was inches away.

Doesn't he have an awesome smile?

A Goldfish Tale

Last October, my younger son acquired a betta fish and a 1-gallon tank. This was the beginning of the end.

Anyone with multiple children will grasp the problem immediately. One child cannot have something without all the other kids wanting it, too. It could be a lollipop, a toy... it could be gout. The actual "thing" is irrelevant. If one child has it, they all want it.

I had my doubts about keeping fish, especially since the last betta we had perished at the hands of a rather impertinent raccoon. However, my older son prevailed upon his grandmother, who was only too happy to whisk her eldest grandson to the store for his own 1-gallon tank and two rosy reds, a type of cold freshwater fish.

I won't bore you with all the details, but three hours, several return trips to the store, and $150 later, we were swamped with fish. We had a 10-gallon tank, approximately 18 goldfish, and 2 rosy reds, not to mention various related books and supplies. (Plus the betta in a separate tank.)

The pet store clerk assured me that half of them would die off within the week. The rest would probably join Davy Jones and his locker not too long after. The point of keeping them at all, he said, was to establish a bioculture that would allow tropical freshwater fish to thrive in the tank when the goldfish were gone.

Naturally, I wanted to avoid any drama when the fish decided to journey to the Great Lake in the Sky, so I warned my son against getting attached. I too steeled myself and decided to view them as a means to an end, nothing more. Then I completely fell in love with them.

It happened like this. As I was adjusting the air hose in the tank, the goldfish clustered around my hand. Their show of curiosity intrigued me, and I stopped to watch them. At that point, the impudent little beggars actually began nipping at my fingers and arm, which both surprised and amused me greatly. I could have swallowed all of them in one gulp without so much as a chew. (As a vegetarian, I wouldn't, but I could.) However, the sheer cheekiness was so preposterous I had to laugh. I was hooked.

After that, I stopped viewing the fish as short-lived bacteria factories and started looking at them. Whereas they had been a simple collective blur before, close observation revealed physical differences around the fins, the tail, the eyes, and gills. Some of the fish even displayed distinctive "personality" traits -- for instance, some were pushier, some were quieter. 

I had to acknowledge that each individual fish was a marvel of creation. It was a graceful dart of color and light. It had curiosity, boldness, even its own sort of intelligence. I'm not sure how to express my thought here -- only that in watching them, I had the sense that they were fulfilling their purpose simply by being the best goldfish they could be under the circumstances.

The task of being a goldfish, too, was far from ordinary. On the contrary, it was quite extraordinary. I'm reminded of a scene from a Shirley Temple film.

"My chicken can do a special trick!
"And what is that?"
"She can lay an egg!"
"And what's so special about THAT?!"
Well, can YOU lay an egg?" 

At the time of this writing, it's awfully dreary outside. Watching the fish glimmer through the water, they seem more magical than any illusion I've ever seen. And it's real magic -- not the fake kind that one sees on a stage with smoke and mirrors. They have the sort of magic that comes from life itself, the kind that all the scientists in the world can't really explain or replicate. It's Aslan magic.

For $1.99, I got 18 fish -- about 10 cents a piece. The price would suggest that my fish are common and nearly worthless, yet I now know that each one of them is really something quite special, completely unique.

By the way, in case you were wondering, it turns out that we lost very few fish during the initial week. In fact, over the past six months, almost half of them have survived. This is more than we originally expected. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I'm glad of it.

Vive Le Sciurus Carolinensis!

We live in a relatively rural area. I say "relatively" because it's not as sparsely populated as Maza, North Dakota (pop. 5), but it's 30% less crowded than Chubbuck, Idaho. (What? You never heard of Chubbuck?!)

Access to the Mother Nature was one of the things that attracted us to our present location. Our current house backs up to some woods and a farm. As a result, we periodically get visitors like bears, deer, and foxes, which is always something of an event. In our house, it is implicitly understood that if someone spies one of these Very Cool Animals, a call is sounded, and we all immediately drop what we're doing to watch at a window.

We also have gray squirrels. Lots of gray squirrels. Short of trapping and relocating these furry roaches, I don't have an efficient way to count them accurately. However, I think that a good estimate would be scores and scores of squirrels.

Now in their naievete and unbridled enthusiasm for all living things, my children have not yet figured out that the squirrels are just squirrels; they're not one of the Very Cool Animals. At least a dozen times a day I receive this urgent breathless summons, "Come!!! Quickly!!! There's a... squirrel!" So I drop the dishes I'm doing, wipe my hands, and run like a madwoman to the window, just in time to see a whole -- what is the word for a group of squirrels? pack? herd? cabal? -- whatever of squirrels dumping out all the bird feeders.

These yard monkeys are ingenious really. One of them climbs a tree and tips a feeder. Then they all descend upon the spill to enjoy a nosh while they plot global domination and how to force me into putting out more peanuts.

Those of you familiar only with scrawny urban squirrels are no doubt scoffing. How could a flibbety-wibbety wisp of fluff possibly accomplish such wholesale destruction and forced servitude? Simple. These are super squirrels. They are fat and sleek and highly muscled from their rigorous PT regimen, which includes leftover waffle-lifting, aerial drops on my roof, and paw-to-beak combat against small birds. I've even witnessed them breaking out their squirrel-jitsu moves on merlins and emerging victorious! Do you know what merlins are? They are small raptors with hooked beaks and razor sharp talons that are designed to eat squirrels, and in my yard, they don't stand a chance!

So forget Planet of the Apes. I'm fairly certain that in the end, Sciurus carolinensis is going to rule the world. In fact, I'm setting out a peace offering of peanuts right now because it's never too early to begin appeasing our future overlords.

This image of a covert meeting of
Sciurus Carolinensis, Winter Squadron,
was taken from a safe distance using a telephoto lens.
Those inexperienced in repelling squirrel attacks
should not try this at home.