The Creatures are Winning

Animal adventures at the Leap compound

Photo by Robert Linder on Unsplash

Once upon a time, a loving couple moved from cold, urban Indianapolis to sunny South Carolina and bought a house in the woods. It was a lovely first home, and they enjoyed all their time in the house. While they were there, they learned about the beauty of nature; the birds, the raccoons, the deer; the ice storms that shattered trees and made sounds like artillery, the flash floods, the brush fires, the stray dogs trapped in the creek suffering from tick paralysis, the giant hornets nests in the woods...and on the house. It was beautiful all around. Nature is awesome!

Then, after they had brought four amazing children into the world, they said to one another: ‘What the heck! Let’s move further into the wilderness!’ And they had a nice man named Brian build them a house of logs, high on a hill near the state forest. While it was being built, they discovered rattlesnakes. Which are nature’s wonderful, fangy, creatures of course. And soon after it was built and they moved in, they learned about wild hogs. And the shocking reality that dogs will simply kill them. Just one more amazing thing in the yard, happy dogs with bloody faces.

In time, the family learned all about the veritable Noah’s Ark that their home had become. Having grown up without scorpions in West Virginia (how poor life was!), the family learned to shake out shoes and watch where they stepped. Inside the house as well as outside. Gradually, centipedes stopped in. ‘Hello human family, we’re God’s creatures too! And we sting like everything else! Welcome!’ By now the family was not only amazed but mildly annoyed. They learned the centipedes are much harder to kill than scorpions. They felt sad doing it. The first time. Then they discovered machetes. Machetes are for more than cutting brush!

A charming family of giant rats lived under the porch. Such a cute family! And the dogs set upon the rats with canine glee. The dogs later made peace with most of the forest creatures and started to completely ignore them because they were outnumbered by the rest of God’s creatures.

One magnificent, exciting year, the family saw a cute little lady-bug (or what they thought was a lady-bug) in the kitchen. And the next day they woke to find, oh, about ten-bajillion of them hanging out all around the house and in the house and in their food and bathroom and on the windows and drapes. Flying like busy molecules that threaten to blot out the bright sun.

Some in the family, it turns out, were allergic to them and wheezed and developed rashes. But oh they were so cute. The family sprayed a chemical around the doors and windows that, years later, still seems to kill the creatures…and probably cause cancer.

The yard at one point developed a case of fire-ants. Incredibly organized, invasive creatures who build giant mounds. The ants said ‘this is our yard now! Don’t touch us!’ Sometimes the people forgot and wore sandals, or kicked the hills over with very unhappy results for the people and the ants.

The house in summer was filled with manifold wonderful things. Carpenter bees slowly, with great dedication, began to bore holes all over the wooden walls and beams of the big log house. The children made great sport of swatting carpenter bees with badminton rackets. It didn’t really help, but it felt good to fight back. Eventually it is believed that the house, like a great building of brittle Swiss cheese, will collapse and kill everyone. Except the bugs, that is! Isn’t that wonderful? Nature…who knew?

Later, various wasps began to engineer amazing nests on the log house; which then developed into entire wasp civilizations. The wasps loved the house, and the family, so much that sometimes they went to bed with them and took showers with them! Stinging is like hugging to wasps. Except it really isn’t. The people engaged in campaigns to kill all the wasps and enrich pesticide companies. Night-time attacks with cans of wasp spray were regular missions of summer life. The wasps are silly and always come back. The wasps live in the attic above the bedrooms too. We’re all a family.

Other wasps, called Yellow Jackets, made their own holes in the ground near the ants, like a great painful subdivision. The HOA rules were ‘hurt the people!’ Especially when they mow the sad, dry grass.

The spiders inside the house were like roommates that went to the bathroom with the family, or climbed up the walls. They were much bigger than normal spiders. They loved the house too! Spiders are beautiful, complex and supernaturally fast. Sometimes it was hard to sleep knowing they were on the wall. Pretty eight legged roomies.

Then stink-bugs came, and what a joy! They sing their happy, buzzing sounds all day and night, inside and out, and land in cooking food and brewing tea and onto the hair of unhappy females in the house. And when smashed, they smell terrible! What fascinating little nightmares. The family was told that stinkbugs prey on ladybugs. Isn’t that just a kick in the pants?

One year above the bedrooms there were noises. Adorable, furry bats appeared in the big log house on the hill. Flying around inside the house, dropping onto the table. What incredible creatures! They were apparently rooming with flying squirrels. The house was now a potentially rabid dormitory! Would either of them eat the stink bugs? And what will eat the squirrels? Will their be hawks in the attic?

Opossums ate cat food with the cats at night, on the back deck. ‘We were here first,’ they said, and asked for us to pay them tribute since we moved onto opossum land. They are like ugly gray cats with sad tails. But they love cat food too.

Once a vulture pecked on the roof of the house for hours. Like it was saying, ‘somebody here is going to die eventually. I’m just getting here early.’

Armadillos also made their way to the yard. They amble about, clunky, armored opossums, digging small holes all over the yard which already has holes. The dogs didn’t even bother. They said, ‘what is that, and why is it so hard to chew? Oh well.’ We hear that armadillos eat fire ants. What eats armadillos? WHAT EATS ARMADILLOS???

Bears sometimes wander through the yard or on the driveway. One of them tried to steel the man’s truck but he didn’t know how to drive and just took trash. Foxes and bobcats are around and so are coyotes. Maybe sasquatch. It’s not clear.

Over the years, stray dogs made their home in the yard, some were born in the yard, and loud, annoying stray cats came by looking to make more cats. Some of them joined the family.

The nice lady of the house has a herd of elegant deer that bring their wee fawns to the yard to feed. So many deer. One of the cats thought he could hunt them; but the mama deer said ‘shove off’ and he ran away.

Over time the yard also became a great, beautiful grave-yard of dead wild animals and dead pets. The man in the house became very good at planting creatures.

The family still loves nature. Maybe, part of loving God’s critters is being in a constant struggle with them. At least then you learn about them in person, not from some sterile display or chapter in a book. Bites and stings are very educational. Learning to keep your eyes and ears open is a good lesson too. Learning to say, ‘hey, what’s that walking towards us?’ This keeps us sharp.

Winter is coming now. Days are shorter and colder. Most of the bity, stingy things are going to sleep (well, and dying). Of course, sometimes they winter in the house, the way people go to Florida. But winter is nice because the family is less likely to be bitten by snakes in the woods.

Sometimes, the man and woman think, a nice little apartment in the city would be a refreshing change.