Another Day in Paradise

In addition to the cold (for us anyway) and the recurring torrential rains, our county is on the list for Governor Skeletor's emergency declaration after two cases of Zika virus (out of 9 or 10 statewide) were reported here. Not sure what that entails since we already have a very robust anti-mosquito program in our county although its current effectiveness may be negated by all the rain. It does mean that the disease may now spread locally since the most common transmission vector is for the mosquitoes to pick up the virus by biting an infected person and then transmit it by biting uninfected folk.

We are, of course, home to 80(!) different species of mosquitoes, 33 of which think people and/or their pets are tasty, of which 13 can spread diseases among us including Aedes aegyptii, which spreads Zika and Aedes albopictus, which could if it wanted to.

Also, the red tide's back—with a vengeance. Thanks to all the rain (see above), the Corps of Engineers has been releasing torrents of water from an overflowing Lake Okeechobee into our main river washing tons of farm runoff nutrients downstream and into the Gulf (note the concentration of red dots) to feed the algae. The algae then overbreed, their vast numbers causing the red color, using up the available oxygen in the water suffocating the fish. Wave action also causes some algal cells to go airborne where they can cause respiratory problems in people.

The good news is the water has probably been cold enough to discourage the brain eating amoeba and flesh eating bacteria.

Meanwhile, back on land, while avoiding the bears and wild hogs and pythons and nile monitor lizards and tegus, it might be wise to note the discovery of a crocodile in town just visiting the beach. Which, for the record, makes us the only area in the world to have both alligators and crocodiles wandering around.

But, what the heck, come on down for a visit. If the wildlife doesn't kill you a tornado or sinkhole just might!

The Naughty Kitties' Reward

So I'm sitting last night with one eye on my laptop trying to get the CS50 shuttle game to work (good news: it does, for the most part. At least, I think, the hardest part is done) and one eye on the football game (I really don't know why this CS50 project is taking me so long) when one of the cats starts repeatedly bumping the toe of my shoe. When I look down I notice the other two right there as well watching her.

I lift my foot and there's a poor little tailless lizard trying desperately not to be seen. It was in such shock it didn't even try to avoid me as I scooped it up and carried it outside.

This is what happens when the weather suddenly warms right back up to the 80s (27C) and we throw open the doors and windows again.

The cats spent the next twenty minutes or so prowling around my feet and chair looking for their prey even though they all saw me pick it up. It doesn't make any sense to them that someone would just throw away a perfectly good lizard.

My brother spread a couple handsful of catnip on the living room rug. Jasmine and Mittens both got high as kites first eating and then rolling in the stuff. Paribanour ate more than the other two but just said "Meh," and walked away.

Further Blurring the Distinction Between Here and There

It was a slightly less humid than normal evening last night, so when my brother went out to the bar to watch his Red Sox play (the local TV only carries their games regularly during Spring Training when they play right across the river, besides it's a good excuse to get out for a while) he let the cats out onto the foyer. Mittens wasn't interested but Jasmine and Paribanour took up the invitation.

An hour or so later, having put food in their dishes, I opened the door to collect them only to find both cats hyper-intensely poking at the base of the wall. I thought at first I might have to take another lizard away from them (all three of them had found one in my room a few days ago, sans tail (no idea if that was their doing), causing me to lock them out when it disappeared under the desk where I couldn't find it until I caught Jasmine with a tailless lizard corpse after I suspect it tried to get out of my room on its own) but I was wrong.

They had cornered a baby snake.

It couldn't have been more than a foot long and looked more like a really energetic worm. How it got inside? The same way the lizards do, I'm sure, probably even easier without legs sticking out. Why it came in FSM only knows. I confess to dancing out of the way when it wriggled too close; my excuse is I was barefoot.

I had to physically toss the cats back in the house (Jasmine twice) to get them to leave the poor thing alone and by the time I succeeded it had managed to hide itself off in some nook or cranny and I couldn't find it again. If it's smart it will figure out how to get back out in the garden where it belongs.

The Extremely Flat Lizard Learning Curve

Dear Lizard:

Stay out of the house. Cats live here. You know this. I am not always around to rescue your stupid (now truncated) ass from them, either. You know this, also.

The only reason I even knew you were inside and in danger is when Jasmine started growling at her daughters because she was afraid they'd snatch you away from her. Unfortunately, I couldn't snatch you out of her mouth either. You're lucky her grip wasn't any tighter or I wouldn't be writing this to you now.

I have no idea where your tail is. It was still attached to you when Jasmine carried you into my brother's room. It was not on you when you escaped and I found the kids playing with you in the living room. Either she ate it or it's still in my brother's room where it will stay forever unless he finally cleans out from under his bed and discovers it all shriveled and mummified. In any event, it's not yours any longer; grow a new one.

And I repeat: Stay outside! You're much safer out there where all you have to face is the larger birds, the black snake that lives in the woodpile, the Cuban tree frogs, the feral cat that keeps coming around because the kids haven't been fixed yet and the hormones and pheromones and such, the raccoon, the opossum and the phantom coyote someone claimed to have seen on the other side of the peninsula. It's not even cold out there anymore.

That's much safer than taking on three bored indoor cats with nothing better to do.

Sincerely,
The Human

Reversion to the Mean, Or: Coal For the Kitties

Now, this is more like it.

I came home Saturday to surprise Paribanour in the Christmas tree. Technically, leaping from the Christmas tree, about a third of the way up. There were four ornaments on the rug, none of them broken. I reattached them and we stopped the tree from turning in hopes that would lessen the cats' curiosity.

My brother reported that after he had kicked Mittens out of his room for some infraction he went into the living room to check up on the F.L.A.C. and noticed under the tree one penguin, a lump in the tree skirt, then another penguin. Mittens had crawled under the skirt. He also had to reattach a number of ornaments from a previous incident.

After I took away their lizard last night (I don't know where they found it. Jasmine and Paribanour were staring intently barely a nose-length away while Mittens played with it on the rug. I was surprised to find it was still alive and put it outside.), they all became agitated and, frankly, a little pissy and I had to keep chasing them away from the tree until they finally all curled up together on the kitchen table.

This morning, there is a branch bent down to the floor, one of the lower ones with no ornaments but strung with lights, and no one is admitting to anything. The skirt is all scrunched up around the trunk.

My brother has packed up the trains and track. Even he admits there are limits and is not willing to tempt Fate further. Instead, he spent the afternoon putting out Santa, snowman and penguin inflatables on the lawn and lights on the house and fence.

Mammals v. Reptiles

The cats love to go "out." "Out" means the screened-in front foyer which is barely more than a meter square. The screen door doesn't always latch properly and they could easily push their way out into the real world but they're happy in the sunlight and humidity. They just sit and watch the birds and the squirrel and the occasional car traveling by. And the lizards.

Jasmine (aka "Fat Cat" due to packing it on because her metabolism slowed considerably after she was fixed but her appetite didn't) caught a lizard a few days ago. She has a habit of racing out the door into the corner of the foyer where she'd seen a lizard on her very first outing. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred there's nothing there. This was the hundredth time. She ran out, snagged the lizard and turned just as the kids raced out to join her. She actually half-growled, half-hissed at her own daughters as if to say, "My lizard. Mine. Back off." She'd never done that before and the kids were shocked. But the best part was, in trying to express her claim, she had to open her mouth slightly and the lizard took full advantage skittering off into the inaccessible crease between the foundation and the screen.

She caught another one last evening. Or possibly the same one. Could be a slow learner. My brother let them all out and almost immediately I heard him yelling, "Bad cat! Put that down!" Jasmine ran back into the house with her mouth full and it took both of us to trap her under the bar chairs. My brother took the lizard from her and put it outside in back.

Jasmine was pissed and sulked for a while. The kids had no idea what was happening. They play with bugs and spiders they find but they've never killed anything and never eaten anything that didn't come from a can or bag. Mom, on the other hand, despite being half-again as large as when she first came to us, obviously still remembers her foraging days.

Before She Teaches the Kids to Kill

Came home yesterday to find Neighbor Dan and the younger Neighbor Dan Daughter out in the lanai playing with the kittens. I like that it's that kind of neighborhood.

Neighbor Dan has examined the kittens a number of times and concluded we have three girls and a boy. Or maybe four girls. Or maybe not. I say take 'em all to the vet as soon as possible so it won't make any difference.

And take Little Gray Mama, too. She killed a bird a couple of days ago (and has probably killed more but that's the only one I caught her with). I heard several avian complaints from the mango tree and recognized them as anti-cat comments from back when I lived in Connecticut and the neighbor cat would come into my back field whereupon several species of birds including crows, robins, cardinals and a Baltimore oriole would all cooperate, forming a circle around the intruder, just out of reach, moving across the field from bush to branch, always with the cat in the center until she got too frustrated and went home. It wasn't an accident; they did it several times.

Anyway, I went to investigate and found LGM under the mango with a small crow she had just killed and was now trying to eat despite being fed between two and four times a day at our house and who-knows-how-many times again over at Neighbor Dan's where she disappears for hours on end. I took it away from her and gave it a quick burial and she let me know she was not pleased that I would waste a perfectly good bird like that.

Neighbor Dan's Daughters also discovered the partial remains of a couple of lizards in the lanai the day before so the sooner we can get the kids weaned the sooner we can get her fixed as well and maybe then her reign of terror will end.

Meanwhile, Bartleby watches a palmetto bug walk between her paws with total disinterest.

What To Do If You See a Tegu

Forget the Cuban Tree Frogs. Forget the Burmese Pythons (1500 hunters could only find 50 of them over the course of a month). Behold the Tegu.

A four foot long, strong-jawed, sharp-toothed, burrowing, invasive, eating machine laying up to 35 eggs per year. Thanks Argentina!

Although they're mostly around Miami and St. Petersburg at this point, there's been at least one credible sighting right here in town.

So, what to do if you see a Tegu? According to FWC: 1. Take a picture, 2. Note the location, 3. Call it in.

I do love that the exotic species hotline is 1-800-IVE-GOT1 and the web address is ivegot1.org

One of Those Days

Sometimes a bunch of little things that, individually, don't mean anything accumulate in such a way that you just have to say "Well, this has been a strange day."

Today was platelet donation day but my appointment wasn't until noon so I decided to get a couple of things done on the way.

First off was gasoline since the car was running on fumes. As I pulled into the station I noticed a lizard had hitched a ride and was now clinging to the driver's side window opening just off the mirror. It was maybe three inches nose to tail tip, brown with a gorgeous delicate greenish stripe down its back. I tried catching it with the intention of releasing it in some nearby shrubbery and ended by chasing it up and down and around the side of my car while the attendant looked on from a distance. Eventually it got away. I tried looking for it when I was done fueling up but couldn't find it so maybe it got to somewhere green on its own.

(Not my barber. Although the resemblance
is scarily close. Stan's hair is fuller on
the back and sides.)

Next stop was the barber shop for my semi-annual shearing where I found my barber undergoing some sort of identity shift. He's always been on the doughy side and kind of soft with a Richard Simmons Sweatin'-to-the-Oldies thing going on, especially with his own hair, which I found amusing because of his very vocal full-on-Ebeneezer are-there-no-workhouses? libertarianism. Today I didn't recognize him. He's gone the full "It's Pat!" His voice is still upper baritone but he was wearing big dangly emerald glass earrings and his hair was classic middle-age matron.

Then it was on to the hospital where the TV over the donation couch was playing an episode of "House" and a patient was crashing out. "Oh uh," said my phlebotomist, glancing at the set while she stuck me. "Somebody's dying!" There's a reason the airlines all have a policy against showing in-flight movies involving plane crashes. I changed the channel.

And then on to the Smithsonian website where today's puzzle turned out to be an exercise in three-d. Even now that I'm done constructing it, the lettering makes no sense. I've already rebuilt it once. Well, back to feeling stupid again.

Miscellanea: Fauna, Aquatic, Aerial and Terrestrial

It looks like the Mohawk Reef has become a magnet for whale sharks. A second one was spotted there just this past week. It's also become a magnet for just about every other fish within twenty miles.

And it seemed the great turtle egg-laying season from earlier this year might have been compromised by Tropical Storm Debby and Hurricane Isaac but, then again, maybe not.

The sulphur butterflies are all over the yard, about the same size and color as the new lemons on the lemon tree. A few viceroys and some others I haven't been able to identify yet are also hanging about.

  

   

The abundance of lizards would seem to indicate that the Cuban Tree Frogs have not overwhelmed our little ecological niche.

And then, of course, there is the cat who has become sleek and fat and demanding, training us to her extremely large vocabulary of grunts, whistles, chirps and mewls as she explains that her food dish needs topping off and her water bowl requires freshening and the door needs to be held open right now while she decides whether to sit on the cushioned chair outside under the oak or remain sprawled on the living room carpet.

And the Winner Is . . . the Cat

The cat finally got into the house. Was let into the house, specifically. As an act of ineffectual softheartedness.

We had a storm (or possible two loosely connected storms) this weekend. I could see the front approaching for about two hours Friday night, rolling in from the Gulf, all flashes and backlit clouds. Thunder arrived about ninety minutes later as it neared and finally the skies opened. Surprisingly, although the storm came from the west, the rain came from the east and I closed the windows on that side of the house. The cat spent the night under my car.

Saturday night threatened a repeat so I took some food out to her before the weather arrived. The winds hit close to 50mph and I closed the rest of the windows. I saw at least three lightning strikes in the neighborhood and the thunder indicated there may have been a couple more. The rain came in sheeting gusts. The Weather Channel showed our storm, a classic cyclonic swirl of clouds and lightning, stretching all the way up the Gulf coast.

When my brother came home from work, I mentioned I felt sorry for the cat out there under my car. He looked out the door and said, "No, she's right here." She'd followed him up the walk and parked herself just outside the screen.

At first, when he opened the door, she was reluctant to enter. She came into the entryway slowly and then into the foyer, walking daintily, sniffing around with a look of wonder on her face. She walked right past the bag of cat food and stood staring into the living room. My brother called to her, using several different names all of which she ignored. Finally, with some nudging, he got her into his room but apparently thought better of that and moved her onto the lanai, making a temporary cat box from an old plastic basin and some fine wood chips. I was concerned for the resident lizards.

Of course, as soon as she was safely ensconced, the rain ceased, the winds died and the lightning stopped.

She spent the night curled up on one of the cushioned wicker rockers and managed to let herself out through the lanai's unlatched screen door in the morning.

The lizards hid successfully and are fine.

Useless Beast

How hopeless is the cat?

Neighbor Dan's daughters came over because they were worried the cat had died because all it does all day long is lie there under the oak tree, unmoving, surrounded by a family of life-size gray ceramic bunny rabbits (one buck, one doe, three kits) made by Mom.

The blue jays are stealing food from the cat's dish while the cat lies there within ten feet, watching. Yet, when her dish is empty, she'll come to the front door and attempt to climb the screen to let us know she needs a refill.

The good news is, because the cat is useless, none of the other wildlife is afraid to come onto our property. There are now two dozen ibis under the mango tree obliterating the local insect population, half a dozen crows and an equal number of doves of at least two different species hanging around the bird bath, where they have reached a modus vivendi allowing both doves and crows access at the same time although the doves are not happy about it. The blue jays, being busy stealing from the cat, show up only for the occasional drink and the mockingbirds ignore everyone preferring to sing all day and most of the night.

The lizards claim the front walkway and the lanai except when this one crow, who has figured out a way to get into the lanai and is pretty pleased with himself about it, wanders in and inspects the various plants at which time they hide in the couch cushions. Every now and then we'll find a frog attached to a window or screen.

None of this would happen if our cat behaved like a cat and was not what it is, for which I am glad, which is:

Useless beast.

The Living Room Carpet, Red In Tooth and Claw

So, I was watching Rachel Maddow last night when a bug scurried out from next to the lanai door panel and into the middle of the room. Bugs, especially the ones that scurry by night, generally come in two varieties: spiders, which I let live despite being, sometimes, almost two inches in diameter because they tend to set up shop in out-of-the way places and eat flies and mosquitoes and other things I would otherwise have to kill myself; and what the natives, in a remarkable piece of rebranding implemented, successfully, to keep from squicking out the tourists, call a Palmetto bug but which is, in fact, nothing more than a giant, not-afraid-of-the-light (probably because of that very size) cockroach.

This one was not a spider.

Before I could get up from my chair and stomp the "Palmetto Bug," however, something very cool happened. Although we do not generally encourage the lizards in the lanai room or outside the front door to come in, and go to great lengths to remove them unharmed when they do, I may want to rethink that policy since this small lizard suddenly appeared from under the curtain by the lanai door and started stalking the roach. The lizard's reflexes were so fast it looked as if the two critters stopped, started and moved as one, but each little lightning movement brought the them ever so slightly closer together until the lizard pounced, grabbed the bug and lifted it off the floor.

Unfortunately, the roach was significantly larger than the lizard's head and it paused to reassess its options. Also unfortunately, this was when I decided to get a closer look at the circle of life dance being played out on the carpet and spooked the lizard. It dropped the bug, which didn't seem to have any inkling of the danger it had been in and wandered off under a side table. The lizard also scurried away from me and in roughly the same direction. The last I saw them, the lizard was once again in stalking mode. They both disappeared under an arm chair.

Coincidentally, I found a small lizard on the arm of the couch just before turning in for the night. I couldn't tell if it was the same one, but I opened the lanai door and helped it out.

Meanwhile the cat was at the front door begging for food.

Useless beast.

Not the Hunter Type

I was pleasantly surprised to notice a couple of small lizards skittering across the entry foyer this morning. I'd seen a rather large one hanging on the screen of the lanai room yesterday. So they're out of "hibernation" or wherever they go during "winter."

I was worried they might be gone permanently from the front of the house because of the cat. She has appropriated one of the cushioned lawn chairs as her official bed and snoozes at various spots (depending on the position of the sun) along the front walkway. She's not any kind of hunter at all and I didn't think the lizards were in real danger. But I thought they might still steer clear of her.

Apparently, they're not much more concerned with her than the birds are. In the evening I can usually hear a bird in the bougainvillea, no more than three feet over the cat's head, yelling at her, and during the day when all the doors are open she can see straight through the house to the birdbath in back with its various rotating congregations of bathers and drinkers yet she can't be bothered to do anything about it.

She's too busy plotting ways to trick us into letting her inside.

Philosphical Musings On Reptilian Motivation

This morning I noticed a little lizard--one of the horde--following a small spider across the lanai floor. The lizard would close in behind the spider and the spider would scoot away and off to the side. The lizard turned and caught up. The spider scurried and sidestepped.

This went on for over a minute. Around and around. The lizard could have pounced on the spider easily (I've seen them leap). The spider knew the lizard was there. When the lizard stopped going after it, the spider simply walked away in a straight line.

Was the lizard just investigating the spider? Do lizards have such a thing as curiosity? Was it playing?

I have no idea.

Wildlife Beyond the Screen

Wow!! Mockingbirds really, really, really hate snakes. Two of them were in the backyard this weekend pouncing on our poor resident slitherer, grabbing it and even lifting it slightly off the ground. It managed to get into some tall grass under a palm tree and the birds eventually gave up and went away.

Two minutes later the rabbit was out back nibbling on the lawn. The rabbit's too large to worry about the snake but, then so are the birds, although it could, and probably would gladly, eat an egg or two. Mostly I think it gets by on the never diminishing lizard population.

The Phantom Spaceship and the Invasion of the Lizard People

Endeavour lifted off this morning on its last voyage. In spite of the fact it was a perfect morning over Cape Canaveral and in spite of the fact it was a perfect morning over Cape Coral and in spite of the fact you can actually see the shuttles lift off from over 250 miles away, we saw nothing. There was a strategically placed cloud between here and there completely blocking any view of the launch. I ended up going back inside and watching the shuttle separate from the main tank on TV.

Meanwhile, on my way out to the front lawn to attempt to watch the launch I noticed one of the ubiquitous lizards clinging to the inside of the screen door. (As far as I can tell these little guys infest almost every square foot of the area and provide the base of the food chain for owls, hawks and other smallish omni-/carni-vores. Back when my brother had a dog, she used to chase them continuously,) I opened the door and nudged it off. It dropped to the walkway, went about three feet, turned and ran back not just into the foyer but straight on into the house.

When I came back in after not seeing anything, it was still plopped right in the middle of the living room. I tried shooing it out, nudging it first one way then another toward the front door and succeeded in getting it to hide under a recliner where it remains.

Ceiling Lizard Is Watching You...

I love living in the sub-tropics.

Last night I turned on the bathroom light and noticed a strange shadow. The light is a three-panel fluorescent fixture built into a drop ceiling over the sink. (Very 80s.) The shadow was about four inches long with a tail and four legs. Somehow, one of the ubiquitous mini lizards that inhabit the place had gotten itself up into the light space. (Actually, it must have come down into the fixture from the attic/crawl space, but I can't figure out how it did that, either.) These lizards are adorable. They live in the lanai room, which is half open to the world, and in the front entryway as well as all through the garden. Their main occupations are puffing out their throat sacs (which are surprisingly large and delicate for the size of the animals--transparent with a visibly red vein system), and doing herky-jerky little lizard push-ups with their front legs.

I didn't want to make a lot of noise at that hour, so I left him there overnight. This morning he was still there so I started poking at the panels covering the lights with stick end of a plunger. I pushed up one panel until it got hung up on the frame and then started bopping the one the lizard was on until he couldn't stand it any longer and jumped. It took several tries but eventually he fell through the crack and landed in a wicker soap basket on the toilet tank. From there he leapt onto a nice big round natural sponge on the side of the tub. I was able to pick up the sponge and walk out of the bathroom before he panicked. Then he ran up my arm.

He froze halfway up. I felt little lizard feet on my skin and immediately regressed to eight years old. "Cool!" I thought. "I wonder if I can keep him?"

Adult me said, "No," so I carried him on my arm very slowly to the front door where he saw daylight and jumped for it. I did notice before he left that his tail was already bobbed from some previous misadventure.

Mom, meanwhile, never noticed the lizard or his shadow, neither did she hear me banging away at the light fixture. I had to tell her about it twice and then she allowed as something like that had happened twenty years ago, too, and Dad took care of it.