Garden Visitors
Every year, I get a few visitors to the garden–usually a frog or three, definitely a cat or two and even an opossum. The opossum wasn’t welcome really. They have a tendency to take a bite out of the bottoms of tomatoes just to see what they taste like. Once they’ve tasted one or two, they aren’t a problem, but still. Have you seen those things up close? Worse, have you smelled them? These are not cute, stuffed toys, people. They are rats with longer fur. Yick. Ick, Blick.
Anyway, this year, we have a new friend in the garden. I don’t know whence it came, and I don’t know how long it will be staying. I don’t know if it needs water, but I put a bin of water out there anyway. I don’t know if it was a pet or a visitor from the wild. I suspect it is an escapee because it is not covered in disgusting mud or algae, but it did not answer when I asked. I left it a lettuce leaf or two, although if it finds it, I suspect that my cabbage may be missing a few leaves in the morning.
If anyone knows what kind it is, do write in and let me know!!!
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My friend wrote to tell me that she thinks it is an Ornate Box turtle! Okay!
It eats bugs and berries, slugs and even a lizard if it can catch it. It can eat all the bugs in the garden if it wants!
I didn’t see it this morning, but the garden is in the shade first thing in the morning so it may have been out finding a patch of sun. I’ll look for it later and watch where I step…
Comment by Maria — May 19, 2008 @ 8:50 am
Early Sunday evening, there was a raccoon sitting in my birdfeeder (it’s a 10″ clay saucer on a pedastal.) He’s sitting there while both of my dogs and I are less than fifty feet away! The wind must’ve been blowing in the other direction because the dog never noticed him. I calmly called the dogs into the house , and by the time I went back out, the raccoon was gone.
We live next to a large field and small wooded area, so we see lots of snacks, a few snapping turtles, and fox, just to mention a few.
By the way, I love the pictures you post. What kind of camera do you have?
Trina
Comment by Trina — May 20, 2008 @ 10:28 am
I don’t know if you can edit comments, but although my dogs may think they’re “snacks” it’s actually lots of “snakes” that we see-garter & worm snakes (I think)
Comment by Trina — May 20, 2008 @ 10:29 am
Trina! Good to see you! I admit, I read that comment and thought…”snacks?” What in the world does she eat in the woods? Can it be safe? Berries maybe??? Glad you cleared that up! I should edit it for you, but it does cause that reader pause…huh?
Maybe I should turn on user-editing…
We have an old Canon powershot S110 digital camera (digital elph). It’s somewhere between 6 years old and a million technologically speaking–it’s only a 2.1 mexapixel. I have trouble getting the focus to work when I’m taking closeups of some flowers. Could be user error. There’s a button for closeup work, but even using that, the camera inevitably focuses and the ground, the leaves in the background, my finger–anything but the flower. Everyone else seems to have a digital camera with a lot more megapixels, but I don’t want to load pictures with too high a resolution because then my page doesn’t load very fast.
Take a picture of the foxes. I love foxes for some reason. They are so cool and I’ve only seen them once or twice in the wild. They aren’t common in NM or in Texas.
I must say digital cameras are a lot easier than my old SLR–pretty handy to have around for a quick picture and an upload.
Comment by Maria — May 20, 2008 @ 10:44 am
Wow, just an old 2mp digicamera, huh? That’s what I have, something I bought years ago from Gateway w/ a whole 2 mp. I have the same problem with closeups. We bought a nice Oly SP350 8mp digital camera when we started diving. We’re really pleased with it–didn’t break the bank and takes some really nice pictures.
I wish I could get a picture of a fox–they’re very elusive. I think I’ve only actually SEEN one twice, but I hear them a lot. They have a very strange rasping, coughing, sort of screaming kind of bark, noise, sound that they make. Kind of gives me the willies. And they’re smaller than I thought. But, yeah, it’s cool living next to the field/woods, I like all of the different critters. The raccoons I like when they stay on their side of the fence. My dogs have had a few encounters with them-not good.
We get a lot of interesting birds, too. Great Blue Herons, Red-Tailed Hawks. Once, a Bald eagle actually flew over. We have Osprey that nest nearby. And, of course, lots of Wood Ducks.
Comment by Trina — May 20, 2008 @ 12:53 pm
I love the birds of prey. They are so cool.
Yup, we just have the little camera. We talked about getting a nicer one (more mexapixels) but the thing is, to mail them or display them, you have to shrink them anyway. The only thing I’d really want to improve is a zoom and those aren’t cheap, so we just doodle with the one we have and it works fine for just about everything.
Those racoons can be nasty to dogs. They look harmless, but they are fighters. They’ll attack enmasse too–scare a pretty big dog good because they are so aggressive and have claws. They’re still better than opposums. Way better!
Comment by Maria — May 20, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
Opossums! That reminds me of a story…where we used to live, we had ‘em, and one night the dogs are raising a ruckus, so my husband goes out there, and finds one laying dead in the yard-the dogs must’ve killed it. So he grabs a shovel to scoop it up and throw it over the fence because that’s where our trash can is. Well, by the time he gets around to the trash can, the opossum has vanished! My husband comes inside and tells me all of this and he’s like, not believing that the opossum survived an attack by two large dogs, but it was definitely not where he tossed it.
Well, you know what happened, I’m sure. My husband’s a smart guy, but he’s no Jeff Corwin. I explained to him, honey, he was just playing “possum”, you know, pretending to be dead? That’s what they do, and apparently it works. Too funny.
Oh, and I totally agree, opossums are some ugly critters. Just plain ‘ol ugly. I haven’t seen one around the house we live in now. Usually, when I see them, they’re flattened on the side of the road. Ick, indeed.
Comment by Trina — May 20, 2008 @ 2:53 pm
Ha! That’s pretty funny.
They are night creatures (in more ways than one if you ask me…) so we only see them on the back porch at night or early morning. We used to have a cat and the opossums would come and check her food bowl. My husband went out to chase one away with the broom–it didn’t play dead. It HISSED at him and looked ready to fight him for the two pieces of cat food in the bowl!
Gross.
They climb trees quite readily too. It went up in the tree (reluctantly) until after my husband came inside.
Comment by Maria — May 20, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
Yep, that’s a box turtle…looks like a Western Box Turtle. The Eastern Box Turtle has smaller color patterns that are clearer than the Western cousin. I have both kinds and have actualy had “Mertle” lay eggs for me off and on throughout the years. One set hatched and 1 out of 3 was raised to now about 6 years old. I lost interest in keeping them in my late teen years and Mom took over and has had them long enough to know that I will be getting them when she dies. Yeaya
Comment by Junda Iquitos — May 31, 2008 @ 4:29 am
Hi Junda–
Good to have a real “name” for it! One of my other friends suggested we call it after whatever it ate–but so far I’ve seen it eat a bug and dogfood…it’s still hanging around. Maybe we can now call it “west!”
We saw it wallowing in the bird bath (it’s on the ground) when it got hot the other day. It sure looked happy in that bath!
Good luck with those turtles. They’re interesting little beasts!
Comment by Maria — May 31, 2008 @ 7:14 am