Nature at Your Door

Sometimes my husband and I get sentimental about the years we lived in Florida. We met down here as young reporters for The Tampa Tribune then married and moved north to raise our family. We'll wax nostalgic about gathering at beach hang outs and driving in my convertible or the charming houses in old St. Pete.
But nothing takes the curb off those fantasies like a visit to Florida in August. A morning run alone is enough to remind me why I never ran in Florida. The thermometer may say 70, but the sheer humidity turns a run into more of a swim.

Sandhill Cranes stalk the neighborhood yards.

After a run, I jump into the pool at Mom and Dad's house to cool off. I float on a raft talking to Mom while she sits at the side. I see her eyes move toward the end of the raft and when I turn my head, a little black frog jumps from the raft into the water.
"You were just going to let him jump on me and not tell me," I accuse her.
Along with frogs and fire ants, daytime dragon flies buzz past floating on the waves of heat. Fist-sized spiders build webs both inside and out.
Birds as big as me stalk through backyards and refuse to leave golf holes.
The day we took Spencer over to school in St. Petersburg, Mom had a run-in with a wasp nest inside the rolled up hose. The wasp sting swelled her hand and her entire arm.
Mom's stories alone should have reminded me that nature is just too close in Florida.
Last week, she told me about finding a snake in her garage after she had pulled her golf cart in. She's had snakes in the garage before and she was determined not to let this one hide somewhere. So she took a blunt-nosed shovel, a spade and dug it into the snake in the corner of the garage. But she wasn't strong enough to cut through it. Instead, she had to steadily increase the pressure of the spade as the snake wriggled trying to get free. Mom estimates the time at about 10 minutes before her spade finally hit the concrete of the garage floor.

Huge spiders build webs inside and out.

She pulled the dead snake out into the driveway for my dad to see when he got home from golfing. When he came home, she learned that the snake, which she figured for a non-poisonous water snake from the nearby lake, was actually a cottonmouth, also known as a water moccasin. Poisonous.
Later that same week, Mom told me about a trip to the emergency room because of another run-in with nature. This time, it was a beetle. On the golf course, she saw a beetle flying straight at her. She turned her head quickly and the bug flew straight into her ear. Instead of retreating though, the bug decided to persevere to the other side. It dug in. The pain became so great that Mom abandoned her golf game and called Dad to meet her at home. They went to the doctor, who sent them to the emergency room, who sent them to an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. As the bug dug into Mom's ear, blood spurted out covering her outer ear and the collar of her shirt.
The doctor said the bug was about dead by the time he finally squirted some antiseptic in there and extracted it.
So wasps, snakes, beetles, spiders, sand-hill cranes ("They will peck your eyes out," my mom warned when Earl scoffed at the big birds.), and we haven't even got to alligators, and someone here in Central Florida had a black bear in their front yard the other day.
If the heat isn't enough to remind me why I don't live in Florida, the wildlife is. I miss my parents and now my son in college who stay in Florida throughout the year, but I'll take Ohio with its tamer outdoor creatures.

Au Naturel

I know that it is healthier for me and my family to eat locally grown foods fresh from the garden. That's why I stopped by our pitiful excuse for a Farmer's Market yesterday where there are two vegetable stands and two homemade soap stands, along with some fresh-baked goods.
I bought some peppermint, tea tree hand soap and then got down to the business of buying vegetables.
Not a lot is ready to be harvested here in Ohio. I bought two zucchini with shiny green peels, two tomatoes that need a little more time on the window sill to ripen, some small red potatoes and a big green cabbage.
When I got home, I pulled off a few of the showy outer leaves of the cabbage and flushed it with water to get rid of the dirt that gathers around the stalk. Then I set it upside down beside the sink where it stayed until I got home about 8 p.m. from a marathon swim meet.
Around 9:30, when I thought I had the energy to get up and eat something, I decided a few slices of cabbage would be a healthy snack. I pulled off another outer leaf of the cabbage and it felt a little slimy underneath. How many of the outer leaves are you supposed to pull off, I wondered. Then I saw a couple of tiny, quarter-inch slugs. They really were too small even to be considered slugs, more like snail wannabes.
So I pulled off their leaves and a few more then a few more just to be sure.
At this point, having dealt with dirt and slugs, I really didn't want to eat the cabbage. I was feeling a little queasy.
I reminded myself that the reason cabbage in the grocery store doeosn't have slugs is that it is sprayed with toxic chemicals to kill things, which is probably much worse for me than anything left behind by the slugs.
I forced myself to eat a wedge of cabbage sprinkled with salt.
I guess it's a good thing I didn't grow up on a farm. Then again, I'd probably be much thinner if it were down to picking off bugs and slaughtering chickens.

Cat Toys

This morning in the dark (yes, it's still dark at 5 a.m. in case anyone wondered) as I put the kettle on for coffee water, I noticed both cats sitting together staring under the refrigerator.
I hate that. I hate when the cats stare at something. Sometimes they'll be staring at me, except not really at me but over my shoulder so then I have to turn around and look. Almost always, there is nothing behind me. Then I wonder if there's something there I can't see!
Anyway, cats sitting together staring under the refrigerator could mean a mouse. I put the water on the stove and rinsed out my press pot for coffee. The cats had shifted. They were both staring at the tile on the kitchen floor and Tupi reached out an occasional big paw to bat at something. Tupi, like Hemingway cats in Key West, Florida, has two extra toes, so his paws are really big.
I turned on the light in the kitchen to see what was fascinating the cats. I leaned over and saw there an innocent little bug. Now I'm no expert on bugs, but this was a little guy who wouldn't have frightened anyone in my house. The bug was about the size of one of Tupi's toes. He was brown and had a kind of shell on his back and a pointy head that looked like a rhinoceros horn. When I later looked him up, I'd say he falls under the category of a stink bug. They're called that because they emit an odor to keep from getting eaten by birds and lizards.
This stink bug no doubt was taking advantage of the warm weather. Since Sunday the weather has been in the high 50s. Earl has had the doors and windows open which fires up the cats' feisty nature anyway.
The cats continued to poke at the stink bug as he made his slow way along the tile.
I put a white napkin on the floor in front of him and he slowly climbed onto it. I took the napkin with the bug out the back door and tried to shake him off into the grass. Apparently, stink bugs have grasping feet because he didn't budge off the napkin. I just lay the napkin in the grass, figuring I'd retrieve it later once the bug had moved on to greener pastures.
Now the cats are staring at me as if I'd stolen their only toy in the house.
Considering that they woke me up at midnight knocking over a pedestal lamp, I think they're pretty lucky to still be in the house.