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| When fire ants ruled the world, oh yeah I forgot, that's now. |
Sunday morning I stepped out into a day which simply could not make up it's mind about the weather. It was cloudy and damp but not raining. The dog and I walked through the front gate and turned to the east on the paved road. Not far along in our walk we came upon the scourge of Grand Bay. Fire Ants. At this time of year they build mounds high above the surrounding ground in sunny places to try and keep their larvae warm. You have to be really careful when you are near these mounds so as not to disturb them. When disturbed thousands of ants will disgorge from the nest running in all directions biting anything they consider intruders. There is no getting rid of these ants you can only move them out of an area for a while. There are so many nests in the fields and woods and under the earth that we have simply come to terms with them and leave them be. The dog knows them well and I only need say "Ants!" to him and he immediately begins to look for them on the ground.
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| Squirrel nests look like trash in the top of a tree. |
We walked on up the road where I spotted a squirrel's winter nest in a Sycamore tree on the side of the road. The nests look like piles of leaves caught in the tops of trees and become conspicuous when the leaves fall from the trees.
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| Zig-Zag can't be bothered. |
Further along the road we saw Zig-Zag the lonely bull munching quietly under the trees in his field. He took only a minute or two to look at the dog and I as we walked by then he returned to his grass. Zig-Zag was only a calf when he arrived but now he has reached adulthood and is a formidable bull. Except for an emergency I would never enter his field.
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| My dog the naturalist. |
As we returned to the house the dog found a turtle again. This turtle was pretty small. It was also a different species from the box turtles I normally find here. After I retrieved the turtle from the dog I noticed it shell was rounded at the sides and did not flip up like the turtles the dog has found in the past. Sometimes I think my dog may want to be famous for finding a new turtle species in Grand Bay. A dog can dream, A dog can dream. Thanks for reading my blog today. Bye.
