the wild indoors

I am one of the more tolerant people I know when it comes to living creatures in my house that are not requiring braids or warm milk, or sex 2 nights a week minimum. I mean bugs, in particular. Right now, we are having the common summer problem of tiny ants in our kitchen. (Don't we all have those?) I seem to remember being overrun by them in my previous home, especially in the kitchen, and squirting them with my homemade peppermint soap and ammonia solution which would just slow them down. They just kept coming.

Today, after killing about 400 before 10 am, my husband angrily said "where the f--k are they coming from!!!???" Let's see, could it be the hairline crack in the window above the sink, a mere 4 inches from where we find them each day? Quite possibly, could it be that they are actually sneaky enough to climb up the wall outside and in through the 6 inch long gash in the screen that you made a few months ago when trying to install it? Is he completely serious? I do not believe in bait or renegade poisoning. Something about both just seems pointless. Bait? I want MORE ants to come? And poison is something I consider very carefully these days. I always ask myself now, where does this stuff end up? I mean, REALLY end up? Have you heard about antibiotics turning up in trace amount in drinking water? You get my point.

We have quite a bevy of multi-legged creatures in this house. I have just begun to truly accept that we all coexist and to barely respond when gutteral cries from the basement playroom of "SPIDER!" and I have been know to casually watch a silverfish swerve across my desk as I write. There are some stories, however, that will forever impact how I look at certain bugs...ticks, for instance. They seem to bring on an immediate panic, as if, without warning, they will lash out at you and instantaneosly give you Lyme disease. I of course know that the ticks that give you Lyme are miniscule and need to be imbedded for 24 hours before you would contract the illness. The thought of having a bug with it's head bored into my skin is not appealing whatsoever, but I think it is the story of my friends son Henry that takes the Bug Academy Award. Picture this:

We are out for a fine day of sun and fishing on our friends boat. Grandma is home with Henry, a freakishly large, wide-eyed and sweet 9 month old son of Derek and Lulu, our hosts. As the story goes, Henry is crawling around, happily cooing at his stuffed animals and Mega Legos et cetera and Grandma is sipping Barry's tea and reading the Times and occaisionally getting down on the floor with him to coo back, or smell his diaper. At one point, she looks up at him, and his face is covered with blood...down his chin, on his chubby fingers and smeared in his hair. Fenway, the chocolate Lab, circles curiously and gives him a lick across the face. Grandma panics and picks him up. No cries, no signs of distress, no visible cut anywhere. What could this be? She curiously cleans him, slightly panicked, totally confused, when he revels from his mouth the remains of an engorged tick. Fenway appears nonplussed. Grandma is mortified. On the other end of the cellphone, somewhere off the coast of East Hampton, I am gagging not from seasickness, but from the "oh how disgusting" factor. Perhaps you are too.

So today, after I brushed a few ants off my peach and killed another spider in the playroom, I went outside and picked a few plump juicy sawfly larvae off of my hibiscus plant and fed them to the bluebirds. I squished the rest between my fingers and crushed a few Japanese beetles too, but truth be told, the bugs are always going to win. There will always be more of them than us, unless we Hiroshima them with God knows what. I am not willing to do that, so I will continue to share my peach with the ants, laugh at my husband and my neighbors for thinking they can win the battle and to think of some of the worst-case scenarios, like Henry's, and be grateful for what I have not.

Bluebird morning

Another reason I decided to start a blog is that there are members of my family who just cannot bear to get another email from me reporting the goings-on of the bluebird family in my front yard. I work at a small garden center in Mystic, and it is a lovely old orchard...open and grassy with rambling stone walls and pumpkin patches and native blueberry strands...perfect bluebird territory. I have the delight of getting to watch the bluebirds streak across the sky and chortle in the trees at work, and became fascinated by them last year.
Of course, my inner coveter kicked in.
So I asked for a bluebird box for Christmas and my sister came through.
Now, to be clear, I don't live in Mystic, and my property is far from "perfect" habitat. I am in Half Acre Hell, as my husband calls it...oaks, privacy hedges and lots of lawn, dotted with the occaisional obligatory weeping cherry and scads of azaleas. Bad landscaping decisions surround me. My employer, a very kind and well-intentioned woman about my age told me flat out "you won't get bluebirds". Now, my inner competitor kicked in. After all, she has 12 acres to fill with bluebird boxes and had nearly 4 families nesting last year. Bluebird populations are on the rise. I have seen the blue streak in my yard...granted, not often, but I know they are here. I am going to focus and visualize and concentrate on giving them all they need to have a successful brood.
So, guess what?
After months of watching, the male one day appeared on top of the box. It is in my front yard, near the curb, in the openest and sunniest part of the property...how they like it. All of April and May I watched the male fend off tree swallows and house wrens and chirp and sing away on the wire above the yard. I removed the wren's dummy nest (more on that later) and even ran running out into the yard, arms flailing more than once to scare off other interested parties. I rarely saw the female and thought perhaps the male was mateless.
But then it began...a few pieces of grass at the bottom, and the next day, a nearly complete nest. In 4 days, a perfect cup of soft grass and moss lay in the bottom of the box. I woke one morning to the delight of watching the bluebirds mate, again and again, on the wire. Holy Cow! I was going to be an aunt!
Yesterday, I returned from work and checked the box. Bluebirds do not sit on the nest during the heat of the day, but return at sundown to feed and roost. There, the bottom of the little cup of grass was one perfect egg. I was beside myself with joy. The girls, ages 3 and 5, have gotten used to watching me do "the happy dance" around the house when I have these mini-milestones with the birds. I can only hope I am creating an example of gratitude for little things. I want my girls to grow up noticing the perfectness of nature, the tiniest gestures of the Earth and to look deeper into the obvious.
Sometimes, the smallest things give us the greatest joy. Try to be grateful for something small today. For me, it's that little blue egg.

My first run

I write all the time anyway, I am telling myself. I have milk crates full of journals for no one to read. Perhaps I can turn this into something interesting. I am sure the more I write, the more I will write and the more I will have and the better it will be.
A whimpy start, but mostly want to train myself on how it looks, and works...