Be One With The Yard

Who says yard work is boring. With all the yard cleaning I’ve been doing I’ve discovered that my yard is an interesting ecosystem that I am both disturbing and fostering.


The bugs, lizards, frogs, birds and mammals have adapted to the environment in a fascinating manner. It speaks volumes for natures resiliency.

My garden, with its ample water supply provides homes to slugs, lizards, frogs, toads, various insects and now a turtle. I’m feeding cats by day and possum and raccoons by night. The broken rain spout is home to at least 1 tree frog. The birds have also developed an appetite for cat food. The jays and mockingbirds also hang around while I mow the lawn. They’ve learned that it kicks up insects like grasshoppers. They are not bashful about swooping down and grabbing a meal that I have provided for them-while I am still mowing.

Evidently my security cameras ultraviolet lights are visible to some insects and spiders. I keep having to clear away spider web strands from in front of the lenses. Sometimes I get to watch a spider weave his web in a blurry close-up image. The webs reflect the UV light into the cameras and block out portions of the camera’s imaging.

I found out how the turtle disappears so quickly when he sees me. He dashes to the cat feeder and slips under the raised feeding tray. Speaking of the feeder; my last modification to the feeder put he storage/feed bin inside the raccoon protected box. The bin is a 5-gallon water bottle. It supplies food to the dispenser in the same manner it supplied water-gravity feed. At the current setting it will feed for 3 weeks or more. It feeds only in the morning after daylight. Otherwise I’d be feeding only raccoons and possum. (this sounds a little bit like the rules for feeding Gremlins) As it is now the raccoons only get the remains of the day and they do lick the plate clean.

Every couple of weeks I open the top hatch to replenish the food and without fail I find a lizard living there. The sides of the bottle are too slick for them to climb so when the food supply gets low once the get in they can’t get out. Oh, the lizard is alive and well. I catch him and toss him into the garden.

My closing for this blog is my experience this morning as I went to feed the outside cats. On one side of the door mat sat Buzz. On the other sat Meredith. In the middle sat the turtle. It appeared to be waiting to be fed. In actuality the cats had just positioned themselves when they saw me and ended up cornering the turtle. I arrived as its confused little turtle brain was trying to decide what to do. At least I finally was able to get some sort of picture of it.

When the cats don’t eat all the food it attracts flies and ants. Today after feeding we had a brief but very heavy rainfall. I sneaked a peak outside after the rain and the turtle was gobbling up flies that were knocked down by the rain.

The yard is full of entertainment.