Nothing to fear

but lizards in the house.

And the miracle is that I’m getting past that.

Actually, lest my sister refuse to visit me again, let me hasten to explain that I don’t have many lizards in the house. Hardly any. In fact, I’ve been here nearly three years, and the one of which I am about to speak is only the second. That’s not bad considering the number that hang around outside. (I have named the house Casa Lagarto, after all.)

Mostly, we have chameleons (which are, probably, really anoles) and geckos and a few skinks.

The lizard in my story was, I think, a chameleon. Although I have an easier time distinguishing them from the geckos when they are their native green. Once they’ve decided brown is the color of the day, it’s a little harder. But, judging by shape, this was a chameleon.

I have long been accustomed—well, okay—I have for a couple of years been accustomed to seeing the lizards scuttle around outside without the need for a gasp and an eek. I don’t even have that zero at the bone* feeling when I come face to face with an enraged anole hanging head height on the garage wall and inflating its throat and glaring at me.

This does not mean, however, that I want them to come to breakfast. And thereby hangs a tale.

Fortunately, thereby does not hang a tail. You do know that many a lizard will just leave its tails behind if you happen to grab it, right? Then, if ever, is the time for “eek”—and likewise, “ugh.”

But, I digress.

The breakfast lizard did not actually come to breakfast. It was not, in fact, anywhere near the breakfast table. I, however, had come downstairs early in the morning with a view toward getting something to eat.

The first thing to do, in my house, when you come downstairs of a morning is to open the curtains. You want to see the creek in the morning. Often, the coots are there to offer matutinal greetings. (Hah! Never thought I’d get to use “matutinal” in a sentence!)

So…I opened the kitchen curtains. I opened the venetian blind on the side window. I opened the bay window curtains. And then, I went to open the curtains to the two big picture windows, creekside. At this point, since I don’t have the official, I-picked-these-out-and-I-love-them window treatments, this requires the use of a long stick to nudge the 4 panels of temporary curtains aside.

One slides left, a second slides right, a third…holy cow! There’s a lizard on the window sill.

Eeek.

Outside, I am accustomed to the unexpected—if that’s not an oxymoron. Inside, it’s a little different. First, there’s the involuntary gasp and recoil, by which time it never seems to me that there’s any point in a scream of any sort. (I sometimes envy the women who scream. My reaction is always too silent to awaken the MotH.**)

But, eek. There’s a lizard on the window sill—and a MotH who won’t appreciate being awakened and who is, properly, scoff-ful (is that a word?) of irrational fears.

And then came the miracle.

I decided I—I!— would catch (and release, of course) the lizard.

Tune in tomorrow to hear how I fared.

* Dickinson, Emily, The Snake—but the principle is the same.

** MotH = Man of the House

Is there some special technique

to leaf blowing?

This is what I am wondering today. I’ve had my leaf blower for about 2 years, and I must confess that I do not seem to have grasped whatever nuances there are.

You’d think it would be easy, right?

It’s a blast of air.

Point at the leaves, and they blow away.

Well, yeah.

They do.

Blow away.

But, here’s the thing. They blow in multiple directions. So, I very carefully clear off one section of the driveway, say, and as soon as I move to the next section, I am blowing leaves back over the cleared portion. It’s…disheartening.

Now, the lawn guys I see working around the neighborhood don’t seem to have this problem. They go whooshing around, jump back in their trucks, and leave behind a nice clear driveway.

That’s not what happens for me. I blow the leaves off the rocks in the flower beds, and they land on the front porch. I blow them off the porch, and they’re back in the flower beds. I don’t think I’m getting the hang of it at all.

I’ve googled.

I don’t find any new ideas, really, except for one guy who suggested making sure your beer is covered before you start leaf blowing. That wasn’t exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

Now, I don’t want you to think I’m buried in leaves. I have had some success. (Some? My budget for bags is BIG.)

I’ve been blowing leaves since October and expect to continue through March. First, the sweet gum leaves fall and the popcorn tree drops its foliage. Then the crepe myrtles and various other trees to which I have not been introduced (so I don’t know their names). Right about now, the cypress needles start drifting across the yard. I think the water oaks begin just when you think everything is done.

Leaf removal is a six month (at least) task. I don’t even try to get all of them up. I just try to keep the hardscape clear.

I’m not terrible at it, but I’m wondering if there’s a way to be better.

I’d just like to be able to aim with slightly more…specificity. Is that too much to ask?

Avian Antics

Who can fathom a bird brain?

It’s been a couple of days of bird bemusedness.

First, there was an injured bluebird, being succored out at the farm.

And the begging duck, unfortunately trained by one of my cousins to like Cheerios, with the result that he (or she) was constantly underfoot at another cousin’s homecoming party. Which is hilarious—partly because ducks are inherently hilarious but also because I’m more used to dogs and cats weaving around my ankles than I am to ducks. (As I said to yet another cousin, “‘Stop chasing the duck’ isn’t a sentence I heard very often in New York.) So, funny, yes, but I don’t really imagine that dropped potato chips are good for ducks. On the other hand, hanging around the humans may keep it out of the way of predators, so who knows?

Meanwhile, we seem to be a stop on the migration path of the Turkey Vultures. Nothing like seeing five or six of them ominously circling overhead and then looking up to find another dozen hulking in the trees above you. Even if you didn’t know they were scavengers, I think you’d find those big dark forms, hunched over and peering down at you, to be something less than a good omen.

However, their dour presence is offset by the Canadian Geese standing on their heads in the pond. Three or four of them with their little butts in the air just make me laugh–especially with a small white heron standing there staring at them.

We had a baby hawk sitting on our mailbox for a time last week.

Then, there are the coots. I’ve been wondering where they’ve gone. And, yesterday, a group of four or five coots came back—in the rain—to huddle next to the sea wall. I don’t know why they don’t swim under the dock. The huddling seems to indicate they aren’t that fond of the rain, but they don’t take the obvious shelter. So, I don’t know. Who can fathom the mind of a bird?

But it’s a miracle, in the face of humanity’s ever increasing encroachment on their habitats, to have all these flighty friends around, still, to astonish and perplex me.

Eeek!

Acromantulas

Well, not really. But I know exactly how Ronald Weasley felt when he and Harry Potter tracked Aragog to his lair (web?).

I took the Christmas lights down today.

The ones around the garage—they were relatively easy.

The dock…that’s another story.

It’s not that it was hard to remove them. A little tricky maybe where they went around the corner and over the lamp, but I managed. A combination of a broom handle and acrobatic skill. Nothing spectacular.

It’s just that there are a few more spiders than usual out on the dock just now. Maybe it’s been too warm? I don’t know. But eeek!

I was okay with the necessity to evade the spider webs as I got the lights down off their hooks.

I was okay with the spider that rapelled past me as I handed the string of lights around the piling.

It’s just the rather large arachnid that was crawling across the front of my sweatshirt as I was coiling the lights that finished me off.

But…you know…let’s look on the bright side. I’m thankful I saw it before I wore it inside. I’m thankful it was on my shirt and not my head or my hand. I’m thankful that the heebie-jeebies were not so debilitating that I was unable to finish the job.

But…eeek!

I’m also hoping that by the time you read this post, I will be thankful that I did not have spider nightmares all last night. (I’m not feeling too confident about that because just writing this makes me feel like things are crawling on me, but hope is good. It never hurts to have hope.)

What I’d like to know, though, is just what is it the lizards think they are doing? I realize that the grasshoppers may be too large for them. But the spiders?

The natural balance around here seems off.

The spiders need to eat the other bugs, and then the lizards need to eat the spiders. It seems a perfectly straightforward food chain to me, but I don’t think the lizards are doing their part.

All I did

was walk out the door.

Honestly! The uproar in my driveway yesterday!

I just wanted to get the mail.

I walked out the side door and before I left the shelter of the carport, two rather large-sized doves took off from the driveway with much fluttering and flapping of wings and cheeps and squawks of panic such that you’d have thought I’d flung a cat into their midst. At the same time, one of the dang squirrels came around the corner, pulled a cartoon skid to a stop (hard to do on a bed of river rocks) and reversed course in a mad rush to escape that startled me just as much as I’d startled him.

(The squirrels, by the way, are no longer to be known in this blog as “the squirrels.” From here on out, they are always to be referred to as “the dang squirrels”—and, when especially irritating, as “those dang squirrels.”)

It seemed like a lot of unnecessary commotion for a simple trip to the mailbox.

Life is like that sometimes.

You set out in all innocence to achieve something of no great moment only to find everyone around you inexplicably horrified and upset by your (to you) harmless actions.

It’s worth remembering, I guess, that there are probably always doves and dang squirrels along the way—whatever you’re trying to do. And their reaction may seem silly to you, but it seems life and death to them.

And it’s also worth remembering—if you happen to be the one squeaking and squawking when the monster is coming up behind you—that maybe she just wants to get the mail.

Where, oh, where

Do the coots go in the summer?

That’s what I’m wondering today.

You see, the coots came back yesterday.

Every winter, usually in late November, we see a few coots. First there are four or five. Then there are twelve. Then there are twenty-four. And then you can’t count them.

This year, I was starting to wonder if something had happened to them. I was hoping it was just that it was still warm enough wherever they were for them to stay there, but I confess to fleeting thoughts about strange avian anomalies—like those red-winged blackbirds that mysteriously fell out of the sky in Arkansas on New Year’s Eve 2011.

So, I was especially delighted to see seven of them swim by the dock this morning. I’m almost always delighted to see the coots, anyway, because they are so hilarious, with their white faces bobbing back and forth as they skedaddle along. They are so sociable, always hanging out in groups, and almost certainly taunting the yellow lab that lived next door. I’m not sure how they knew she wouldn’t go in after them, but they did—swimming right up to the dock and just waiting until the last minute for her to rush up barking wildly before they leisurely flitted a few feet out of reach.

I get a kick out of coots.

I’m happy to have them back. It makes me feel like nature has a friendly side. (Not always my impression when the mosquitoes are auditioning for Dracula and the sweet gums are hurling limbs at me or grasshoppers are chewing my window screens.)

The coots swim by in the morning and, usually, again in the afternoon. We greet each other cordially. (Well, okay—I wave out the window, and they don’t actually spit at me or anything.) I watch with interest as the flock expands exponentially. I think they just gather friends and relations over time as I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baby coot. (A cootlet?)

I sometimes think it would be nice if they stayed around all year, but it’s likely we would take each other for granted if that were the case. It’s probably best that they remain a seasonal pleasure.

But where do they go in the summer?

How can I know what I think

until I see what I say?
~ E. M. Forster

That’s what I’m wondering today—it is Wondering Wednesday, after all—as I’m casting about for a specific topic. Basically, I’m wondering what I’m going to write. (This is a regular phenomenon since I took up blogging.)

It’s not that there is not a lot about which to wonder. Surely, there is something I think and about which I would want to communicate amongst all the mysteries at hand. Look at the state of our politics here in the United States, for example. Now, there’s something—a lot of somethings—to provoke wonder. But we don’t have a day of the week whose name begins with the letter ‘R,’ so you are all spared a regular Rant Day. I have promised myself the blog will be positive—mostly—so, you know, politics. . .off limits.

I wonder about the future. Do I need to figure out what’s next in my life, or will the Mayans solve that problem for me?

I wonder if I’m ever going to write another play, or have I inadvertently retired? (Or, is it a moot point—see Mayans.)

I wonder what I should do next in renovating my house. Is it time for a kitchen makeover? Wouldn’t we like to have a bathtub? And does that mean the entire bathroom needs a makeover? What comes first in the rest of the house—the carpet or the windows? Will I ever have furniture?

I wonder who bought the house next door and if they will be good neighbors.

I wonder why the coots haven’t yet returned from Capistrano—or wherever they go in the summer.

I wonder if anything, anything at all, will persuade the squirrels not to hang like bats, head downward, clinging to the coquina and if I will ever get used to an upside-down furry tree rat hanging head high over my front door.

Lastly, I wonder which of these and many other questions will be addressed in next week’s Wondering Wednesday post.

‘Cause this one’s done.

The earth moved

Or, at least, the sidewalk.

The miracle this Monday once again celebrates the ingenuity of the MotH.*

See, we have a concrete walkway up to our front porch. (I hesitate to dignify it with the name “porch,” since it is really just a concrete slab, but it does have 2 columns holding up a little roof, so what would you call it?)

This walkway is made out of several separately poured sections. Over time, a corner has sunk here and there, and the walkway was no longer as smooth and even as it might once have been. In fact, it was a tripping hazard.

So, the MotH announced that he was going to attempt to fix this.

Oh, ye (or me, really) of little faith!

Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Surely, the sidewalk would end up not only uneven but cracked and broken.

I suggested that, perhaps, this was something on which we might want to get estimates. But, no. Nothing deters the MotH once he gets a bee in his bonnet.

The next thing I knew he was out there digging holes alongside and under the walkway. Then he got the car jack. You know. That thing you use when you have to change a tire. (I cannot remember the last time I needed to change a tire. Do tires even need changing anymore?)

Anyway, he slid the carjack under the walkway—and he jacked it up!

Then, he got some wood to help hold it in place and packed dirt back into the holes. A little sealant stuff at the seams, and the walkway looks brand new. It may not hold up under heavy use—but it’s been almost two weeks—and it doesn’t get heavy use anyway.

I don’t know why I always view these projects of his with trepidation. They almost always turn out well. (It’s possible my hesitancy stems from the time he drilled a hole in the bottom of our boat three days before we were due to set out on a 19-day cruise down the Intercoastal Waterway—but that’s another story. And it happened quite a while ago, now. Maybe my inner warning system could let it go.)

Truly, I think the MotH is kind of like Archimedes. Give him a lever and a place to stand, and he could move the world.

It’s just that he probably shouldn’t mention it to me first.

* MotH = Man of the House

All right, NOW it’s 17 trees

15 + 2

I’m not especially good at math, but I’m pretty sure that’s 17.

Yesterday, I was talking about how I had gone with my mom’s garden club to the park to decorate 17 trees that turned out to be 14 trees, really.

Oh, wait!

That means the equation is 14 + 2 which is not 17 trees at all, but rather 16! (I told you I was no good at math.)

The two is for the two trees I’ve decorated at my own house today. Although, if you wanted to stretch a point, you could say that one of them was so complicated that it counts as two—which would make my decorating score for today three which would make my total score 17—thus lending an air of authenticity to the headline of this post.

One of them was simple.

My bubble light tree.

Decoration involves taking it out of the box, fluffing its branches, screwing in the bubble lights, and plugging it into an outlet. Voilà!

I love my bubble light tree—and not only because it is easy to get it up and running. Mostly, I just think the bubble lights are way cool!

The second tree was our official tree.

We have the most gorgeous artificial tree. Purists among you will shudder, but it truly is the most realistic looking fake tree I have ever seen. If I could get it to smell like a fir tree, no one would ever know the difference.

Of course. . .some assembly required.

All the branches have to be attached and arranged in their proper order. A little forethought during dis-assembly and packing for storage, however, and this is not much of an ordeal. The needles are a bit scratchy when you have to reach inside the branches, but this can be mitigated by wearing long sleeves.

It’s not so much the assembly that complicated matters as it was the MotH’s* new project around the model train.

We’ve had this model train for ages. In our NY apartment, it didn’t have a lot of scope. For the first few years we were here in Florida, it seemed all we could do to get the dock decorated. The train was short-changed again. This year, however, the MotH decided it was time for the train to come into its own.

He built a platform.

A big platform.

Not only for the train, but for the tree, too.

Holy Moly! The tree is now nine feet high.

Putting on branches, stringing lights and garland required two ladders. Placement of ornaments involved much climbing.

It is a miracle nobody fell out of the tree. (It is a miracle that nobody has carted me off to Bellevue by virtue of the mere fact that anybody could fall out of a tree inside my house!)

But, the tree is now up (waaaaaay up!), and it’s all decorated, and the train is lying at its feet.

We’re going to have to make a trip to the hobby shop for some more track—and, I’m thinking. . .maybe. . . .cows?

But that’s a whole other story.

* Man of the House

I can see clearly now

Through the windows, anyway.

This may be one of those tips that everybody has known for a millenium. . .except me. On the off chance, however, that you missed it over in your parallel universe, too, I’m going to pass it on.

I may have mentioned that Casa Lagarto has a lot of windows.

This means, of course, that there are a lot of windows to clean. It’s true that window cleaning can be put off for a while. Sometimes a long while. I suspect all of us have deep sympathy for the cliché household help who states firmly, “I don’t do windows.”

On the other hand, there are times in your life when windows must be “done.” This is especially true when one of your home’s salient features is the view.

Being a child of my era, I have tended to rely on Windex® as my window-cleaner of choice. I’ve used some generic versions, and they don’t seem to work so well. I’ve used vinegar. It’s okay, but rather pungent.

I have recently stumbled upon—as in, found on the internet—the surprising (to me, anyway) fact that dish detergent works wonders. Mixed with water, of course, and applied with the kind of squeegee that has a sponge on one side and a rubber blade on the other.

Streak free!

And, I suspect, cheaper than all the specialty cleaners. I’m saving on paper towels for one thing.

Of course, there are a couple of drawbacks. A bucket of water is a bit heaver than a squeeze bottle. And the whole thing is a far drippier process. (Hint: Only use the dish soap and water process on the outside of your windows.)

Oh, well.

The windows look good. I’m settling for that.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Category Archives: Casa Lagarto