We have learned to live with the ants in the kitchen. In fact, I don’t mind them at all anymore. We’ve ceded them territory in the vicinity of the waste bins; they’ve given up their claims on the cat’s food dish. Now we all get along. I admit that I’m tempted sometimes to buy a packet of diatomaceous earth and see what happens if I sprinkle it in their way, but then I feel a pang of guilt at the thought of their murder. I dislike the way they struggle through the hair on my arms (which happens occasionally), but even drowning them in the sink feels like a trespass. We’re all neighbors now.
Hyacinth, our Ameraucana hen, has gone broody again. She spends all day in the coop and would sit on a rock for weeks if it were shaped like an egg. The other hens are afraid of her. When anyone gets near she fluffs her feathers and makes a sort of Jurassic growl-and-click sound that proves once and for all that birds are descended from the dinosaurs.
The toad died. My daughter had caught him as a tadpole at a lake in the mountains and raised him at home for more than a year. He had become like a corrupt Roman of the patrician class. He refused to exert himself for anything. We had to feed him by hand or else he would starve. We found him one day in his shallow bath, bloated and still, with his tongue sticking out.
The garden spiders have recolonized the back yard. Every morning they spin new webs under the porch or between the smoke tree and the alder. The rhododendron is full of them. They’re small still, little orange things full of ambition and energy. By the end of August they will be ten times larger, old and wily, more stoical but more intimidating. I’ll be less careless of walking through their webs then; it won’t be so easy to brush them off my face without a shudder.
Smith the cat came to us last year as a stray, half-feral and hungry. We tried to keep him indoors but he began knocking over lamps and plants to show his displeasure. He’s more manageable now that he spends the day outdoors. The trouble is that he kills songbirds. The neighbors dislike him for this reason; they say they don’t see as many birds this year as last. We didn’t want to blame Smith, but we put a bell on his collar anyway. Even so, I found a half-eaten finch in the grass yesterday.
Loose Canon 