Outdoorsy Snippets

Yesterday Fio grabbed her loppers and entered terra incognita, the southern woods outside the chain link fence that borders Sonia's realm, and was met by a barrage of brittle branches and biting bugs.  Fio lopped off all the branches she could, but couldn't do anything about the bugs, who polka-dotted her legs with bites. Just one of the joys of country living.
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Fio has discovered what looks like another armadillo burrow.  We're the mother lode.
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Husband and Fiorella have a number of outdoor projects going on--cleaning up the southern woods, turning the meadow next to the dry creek into a picnic area, edging the cactus garden out front with bricks, talking to their neighbors about a boundary fence--and when these are finished off, there are more coming down the pike. If you come visit,we'll put you to work.

Summertime Visitors

Recently Fiorella has been confronted by some wildlife she'd rather not see again. You've already heard about the cicada on the bedroom wall, but she hasn't told you about the scorpion in the guest room, the centipede wiggling down the hall, and the gargantuan grasshopper(?) in the kitchen.

The scorpion was not unexpected at this time of year--apparently they too try to escape the heat--and Fio's flyswatter quickly dispatched it to wherever scorpion souls go. The centipede, though, was a real thrill. Fiorella had never seen anything like it--four inches long, brown and orange, millions of moving parts, with nasty looking pincers at one end. She went for the flyswatter and bashed it several times, but its innards never squished out so she thinks it was just stunned. Whatever, she tossed it outside for the birds to eat.

Next appeared the large grasshopper-looking thing with barbed legs and antennae about two inches long. It too met with the business end of Mr. Flyswatter.

Fio could never get the hang of the art of fencing when she was in college, but she's hell on wheels with a flyswatter.

Chiggerbait

Fiorella has discovered that the yard work along the driveway had consequences she should have expected but didn't--chigger bites. And they're all along her underwear lines, which makes life--uh--interesting.

Ever since her family moved to Texas when she was seven, Fio's been prime chiggerbait. As a child, she would end up with 30-some bites on her legs during the summer. We treated them with clear nail polish back then--Fio's legs glistened.

Her mother never had this problem, and Husband doesn't, but apparently there's something about sweet Fio the little blighters like. Fio figures she's the ice cream of the insect world.

High Flyin'

Fie on the fly that will not die!

Every day Fiorella swats a single fly into oblivion and the next day another fly buzzes her contemptuously again. Not a couple, not a horde, just one single solitary totally irritating fly. Is it the same fly? Is it a zombie fly? Is Fio cursed by the ghost fly of Christmas Past?

Well, Fio can curse back! Take THAT, you %*&# fly!

All Creatures Small

Husband and I have different attitudes toward insects. I step on them, swat them, or smash them. He carefully scoops them up on pieces of cardboard and carries them outside. Even scorpions.

I think it comes from his mother, who, having read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the first big ecology book, banned the use of any pesticides in her house. I remember going into her kitchen late one night, turning on the light, and seeing a million big river roaches dive for cover.

Husband isn't that extreme. He sprays for roaches and obliviates flies. Ants also receive no mercy from him, especially the ones that attack him in the yard. But caterpillars, pill bugs, and stray wasps all get the royal treatment.

And so do I, even when I bug him. (But he lets me stay indoors.)










All creatures small-husband rescues insects, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring