Today's topic is nature in Georgia. Specifically, the local flora and fauna. First up is our flora of the week. It is none other than ... poison ivy. We have lots of it infesting our yard in lieu of grass. We decided that we didn't want that so we embarked on a mission to get rid of it. We wore nice, thick gloves. We sort of protected our skin by wearing longish shirts/pants (or, mainly short sleeve shirts and shorts because it was hot and we were too smart for poison ivy to get us!!!) We started yanking and pulling out what seemed like jungle vines of poison ivy. It was even growing underneath some of our 40 bags of lawn refuse (we can only put out 8 bags a week, so we have quite the stockpile!) We did this for many days. I bagged it after pulling. Todd yanked it and threw it on top of our ever growing piles of yard waste (the piles yet to be bagged, that is) in the thought that "it'll dry out and be dead" (and therefore no longer a threat). As we read in the paper today, "dead" poison ivy can still give you the rash up to 5 years later from contact with it. In our case, it didn't take 5 years (more like 3 days). It's not bad, but not exactly fun. We are thinking of bagging some up and mailing it to the sellers...
Next up is the local fauna. We have lots of squirrels. We may have some in the attic (or used to). They are a bit of a menace here (one neighbor admitted to causing many to have "unfortunate deadly mishaps" when they started eating the siding of his house!) But, we have a secret weapon...the hawk. Yes, as in a bird-of-prey hawk. It is usually perched up in the surrounding trees, occasionally swooping down to attack things (mainly animals). It also likes to attack the next-door neighbor's birds when they bring them out for fresh air on their front porch. It basically rams into the cage, knocks itself a little silly, and then flies off (because it only sees the pretty, tasty, bright yellow birds...not the cage). I got a picture of it in our tree today. It was in our tree today because it was enjoying a feast of dead squirrel on our steps. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of that. But, it's one less squirrel to raid our bird feeder.
Tomorrow I go get my Georgia drivers license. Hopefully, the poison ivy won't show up too much in my picture...
