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.

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.