So, I just finished an almost month long house sitting foray at what I call The Woodland Creature Motel. There's a lot of nature to be had there for such a small place, so that's this post with pictures! There's several places either The Sister or I have stayed for house sitting where we live and I've given them all code names, because A] It's more fun that way, & B] You don't want to bandy the homeowners' name around all willy nilly. This one is small. It's almost like camping in a cabin out in the woods. But there is another one dubbed the cabin, so this one was dubbed a motel. Mainly we named places after pertinent spaces in the telly show Supernatural. A lot of places were taken, so this was because of the numerous quirky motels they stay in while on the road. The theme? Obviously Woodland Creatures. The small house's backyard ends in a short drop off to a creek. There are fish living in there (small and quite big), frogs that chirrup and croak at night, raccoons that forage and travel along its banks (& come up into the Motel yard for food), some turtles, stray cats using the slopes as a bi-way, a Great Blue Heron that hangs out in there, and loads of birds swooping around in the trees. Part of my job is to feed the 1 - 3 stray cats that will show up in the backyard. I hear-tell there are three, but the tabby known as Mama, I have never seen. The past two years, the black cat stray, Chekotay, and the gingie stray, Number 9, both showed up. This year it was only Number 9. He's always looked like a worn teddy bear, but this year he looked more worn and had raw spots on him. :( I'm also, now, to scare off the non-stray black cat who has decided it owns The Motel. The lady had a name for it, but I don't remember it (that name is unimportant). The first time The Sister & I saw him was during our short stint this past January. On New Years Day, he was in the drive with the black Rental Cat that comes with The Motel (Astro), which was the very same day that NASA discovered the trans-Neptunion object MU69, (this cat also wasn't seen by the homeowner before this time, so we "discovered" him) which they nicknamed Ultima Thule. It's spacey, he's Astro's arch nemesis, so it was perfect. I don't scare him off though, because I like cats. I just say "Ultima Thuuuule" in a slightly menacing, you're a villain sort of voice and point. I also don't feed him canned food when he shows up (like I'm to do if any of the real Motel Strays arrive), but if he eats the dry food or drinks some water, I won't tell him no. I'm also to feed the little turtle should it show up, but it did not. Though the turtle never showed up until I started house sitting back in 2017. Showed up twice that year in the back yard after heavy rains. Then once last year to the front door. I'm aware it could be a different turtle, but I don't know and just like to think it's the same one. My main jobs, besides the feeding of the stray cat (s), is to feed and love and take care of the Rental Cats, Astro & Bodhi. Along with that it is the feeding of the birds in the morning. Two feeders out back with some scattered on the ground and five feeders out front with some scattered on the ground. And to leave dry cat food out back at night for the stray cats, but really it's for the raccoons, because she knows they eat the cat food and ransack the bird feeders. There have also been Opossums to show up the first two years, but I sadly didn't see any this year. The raccoons though, I saw them just about every night, but then I didn't go to bed until between midnight and two. They're so bad and adorable at the same time. Any year, if you flip on the light and look out into the back yard you'd see at least one swinging, upside down, from a bird feeder. This year, I would find on most mornings, the longer, tube-shaped feeder (mainly I saw the smaller birds at this type of feeder) on the ground with the metal hanger twisted, muddy paw prints on it and all the bird seed gone. Which is fine, the homeowner knows this will happen and is OK with feeding the raccoons, which I like that about her. I'd probably have fed them anyways, because they're so cute. The last day, the wooden house feeder was on the ground and they had ripped it apart. Took pliers, a nail, and a hammer to get that rigged again. Sheesh. Also, sometimes I'd hear a slight tink-tinking at night & knew it was a raccoon eating cat food. Tipping the dish to get food, and letting it fall back on the cement. About a week before I was to leave, The Sister and I were in the kitchen and we heard tink-tink-TINK-ink... "Umm... that's not the right sound... did they break the bowl?" We went to look and they had thrown the bowl to the other side of the cement and it lay in three pieces with cat food all over the ground. "Oh no!" but then it became adorable knowing that the culprits were three baby raccoons, siblings, fighting over the food, with their mom and dad wandering around nearby. They'd hiss and chitter at each other and gobble food and push each other away. TOO CUTE!!! The other house sitting places are as follows: This 1920's clapboard sided house with additional space added in the fifties is known as The Cabin, for Rufus' cabin that they stay in after Bobby's house burns down. The Sister will house sit there for a bit this August, but they're leaving for Africa for work and will have someone living there while they are gone, so that's not really on the list anymore. It was fun to watch Supernatural there and take care of the kitties. :( Then there was The Bunker, after the awesome Men of Letters Bunker that Dean & Sam inherit. This place was a rambling mid-century ranch style and it was so bunker like that they had alerts on every door to ding-dong should someone come in, so you'd actually know, because otherwise you couldn't hear anything. But it was really nice and cozy unlike a military bunker but much like the Supernatural bunker. It also had a pool which just upped it's awesome factor. But the homeowners put their house on the market and left for the North. They just sold the house, so The Sisters' check on the pool (& swim) privileges of this summer ended on 21.July. :( Our house is two story, blue, and has cars out front (six in all - three dead, and three that work - unless we're working on them), so our house we call Bobby's House or Singer Auto when we're away and house sitting. His house doesn't seem blue in the "present day", but when they see it in his dreams of the way it looked before the unfortunate event with his wife, it's bright Smurf blue. There's one that only The Sister house sits at and recently too. The original homeowner, who had the house built in the 1970s, wanted everything very Japanese-eque, so we've nicknamed it The Monastery. It's cool looking, but the current homeowner is very minimal and it's not comfy in the least. It is very much like a Buddhist Monastery. Only good for contemplation and meditation. There's one I just finished house sitting at this past weekend (& The Sister had a three week stint there earlier in the summer). It's an unassuming late 1960s/early 1970s house from the outside, but the lady of the house, our friend, is very quirky. She collects and decorate with all sorts of mid century furniture and bizarre retro items. I wanted to name it The Playhouse, after Pee-Wee's Playhouse, and even though she'd never know the nickname for her house, I knew she would probably find offense with that. So, I thought about naming it the Swiss Miss Chalet, after those quintessential mid-century houses of Palm Springs, but The Sister said it was too long (it was the same about of syllables as the real name). So, we've settled on The Beeboppa Boop House, because of one of the cats. He's not striped, but is black and white and reminds us both of the Kliban Cat (that wears red trainers). He's super fluffy and has a long face and is super weird and The Sister said he reminded her of a muppet the way he'd animate his face or 'beeboppa boop' his head, which is how he got the nickname. Don't tell anyone, but he's our favourite! But back to The Woodland Creature Motel. We decided to wash our car while we were there. We've washed a car on other years too, however this time when I happened to look up I saw this only on a much grander scale. Right over the drive were large dragonflies and Swallows (I think they were Swallows?) just flitting to and fro over the drive. There's only three of each pictured here, but there must have been 20 - 30 dragonflies and 10 - 15 birds. The birds weren't after the dragonflies like I'd initially thought, they were both just having fun. The owner said she's never seen anything like that over her yard. She washes her cars too. In my last post that was only about birds, I mention the Siamese Canuck's, another incident that "never happens". Both were quite magical and just a one off as well. Neither event happened again. The Misadventures of Yoghurt at 8.30 in the MorningThe beds don't sleep well at The Woodland Creature Motel, so I was up pretty early most mornings. Anywhere from six - eight am. This is unheard of for me on a regular basis. So, one morning I was up about eight and was having my coffee out front, having just finished feeding The Rental Cats, Number 9, and the birds out back. The Motel makes an L, with the garage barring the view of the eastern section of street from the front porch. But from that direction, I heard what sounded like arguing. Surely no one is arguing... out in the street... at 8.30 in the morning... on a Sunday. I couldn't have been more wrong. I thought I should get up and just see what the deal was, until I saw their distorted reflections in the nieghbours' window across the street, and heard their voices growing louder. They were heading my way, so I just stayed put. It was this guy I'd seen walking on other occasions, always dressed as if for an African Safari instead of the normal sport wear of the other neighbourhood walkers. "He tried to bite me! That dog is evil!" To which a woman's voice could be heard rebuffing that statement, but I didn't get what she said. They were walking right past The Motel and the woman was the lady I'd seen 5 - 10 minutes earlier, in appropriate sporty walking attire, walking in front of the motel from the west. Now she was straggling along back the way she'd come after this guy who was pitching a fit over some dog I had yet to see. Oh, no, there's the dog! Following right behind the guy with the woman following the dog. "If you'd just stop, I could get him!" she whined. "I'm not stopping! (though he kind of did), that dog is vicious, it will attack me!" And he stormed off. She glared at me and then started screaming for the dog to come back to her. "Yoghurt!! Yoghurt come here right now!!" I almost laughed, but was trying to keep as low a profile as I could. You could hear the man to the west of me and I think he lived two houses down. The dog had run up the yard to the house on the hill. That one lady kept whinely screaming, "Yoghurt!! Come here NOW Yoghurt!", amidst the mans screams of "(insert woman's name here, I can't remember) come here! Come get in the house! That dog is evil! Come on now! Hurry!!!" for at that moment I noticed a second lady who had come down the hill from the west to stop at the intersection looking confused. Apparently Safari Man and his wife made it to safety in time? Yoghurt had bounded up the street to the south, and Walking Woman went back home to the east in a huff. Five minutes later Yoghurt came bounding back and looked uncertain because he was alone at the intersection. He romped through the yard for the house on the hill again for a few minutes then came back down and started his slow meandering back in front of The Motel towards the east; presumably back home. This is what I noticed. Walking Woman obvious has trouble with Yoghurt. A lot. Whether it's just him not listening to her, or else other incidents with Safari Man. Safari Man was full of fear walking down my street and when calling out to his wife. That dog? That dog wasn't evil or mean, it was just dumb. I'm not trying to be mean, but you know the type of dog. Tongue hanging out, stupid look on their face, just wants to chase butterflies and doesn't listen? Yep. I doubt that dog has hurt anyone, or even tried, though to be fair, if Yoghurt had tried to bite Safari Man, he was asking for it with all that fear oozing off of him. I'd have been afraid too. Also, if I were Yogurt, I wouldn't have come when called either if my owner was screaming at me. Now, we'll move on to mushrooms before closing this post. I like mushrooms, though I can't identify them (yet! I'm working on it), and there are a lot of variety to be found at The Motel. This photo was a happy accident. It was in the back yard and the sun was coming down through the trees to just illuminate it at that moment. I love when that happens. This photo is the same mushroom as the first. The next day I went out and it had opened fully and had two babies, this is one of the babies. Took this looking through one lens of the binoculars supplied by The Motel.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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