Chapter 52 - The Snail Shell House - Part 5 - Critters - from my book Changes

A frog jumped on my forehead when I uncovered some wet cob.

Chapter 52 - The Snail Shell House - part 5 - Critters

Each day, working on the snail shell house, there was always the possibility of seeing a critter.  The ones I saw most often were the hummingbirds.

I always thought of hummingbirds as staying around flower gardens, but there must have been plenty of yummy nectar there at the property for them.  They were curious little things, which was delightful.  They would come buzzing in from way up high by the tops of the trees, and swoop down to about 5 feet above our heads to check us out, then swoop, away they would go, back to the treetops.  I loved how they made the sharp buzzing / chirping sounds as they cocked their little heads while hovering over us while we worked.

Another little critter that showed up once in a while were the little wild bunnies.  Once our dog flushed one out from the bushes near the house and it came sprinting over, in it’s speedy fast hippity hoppity way, and hid under the chair I was sitting on under the overhanging roof.  The dog came searching for it, but could not figure out where it was hiding.  Then, at a point when the dog was busy looking in the wrong place, the little bunny made a quick exit back into the bushes.  Our dog never figured out where it went.  I was glad the bunnies could outsmart our dogs so easily.

We also knew there was a bear and her cub that lived nearby.  We saw their tracks and the mamma’s scratches on the trees.  There were also scat signs that were very noticeable during the season when the apples or blackberries were ripe.  There was an area we called the bear lair, and my youngest would not get out of the truck when we were harvesting fallen trees there.

My sister had an experience with a bear one night while living in the yurt.  She could hear the bear snuffling, breathing, and pawing at her cooler which was just outside the yurt walls.  She hid under her bed until the bear went away.

There were coyotes on the mountain, and we could occasionally hear a loud and wild sounding chorus of them, yip yipping all together in the night.  Their high pitched howls filled the whole side of the mountain when they were near.  It was chilling and we were glad we were in a shelter.

And then there were the cougars.  We knew there were cougars in the mountains in the Pacific Northwest, and my sister had a scary encounter with one right by her little spiral house.  She was sitting outside  plucking fur off one of her Angora bunnies who was shedding so her daughter could spin the wool later, and my sister heard a low rumble coming from the nearby bushes.  It sounded like an idling chainsaw.  Realizing it had to be a cougar, she yelled to her daughter in the yurt to get the shotgun and shoot it into the ground so the noise would scare the cougar away.  Though my sister didn’t see the cougar, she knew there was one stalking her.

One summer there were thousands of ladybugs that came through out area, landing and crawling all over the yurt!  I picked one up and found out these ladybugs could bite!

Sometimes we saw termites because of all the fallen and rotting wood that happens in forests naturally.  Fortunately they kept to the rotting wood on the forest floor and left our structures alone.

The mosquitoes were practically non existent.  We had barrels around to catch water, but we were always careful to use strainers to clear out the mosquito larvae that we found in the water.  There was only one time I heard a mosquito buzzing at my ear one night when I was in bed in the loft of the snail shell house.  It was still summer and there were no walls, windows, or tarps up yet, so the space was wide open to the night air.  I heard the mosquito near me and I said, out loud, “Where are my bats when I need them?”  Within seconds a bat swooped in, across the room, and out, taking the mosquito with it!  I giggled and said thank you, marveling at the goodness of that precious little bat.

When evening fell and dusk was upon us, there were always little bats that came out, flying around in their odd jerky way, silent in their movement, hard to follow with our eyes.  They moved so quickly and erratically, I was surprised they could navigate so well without crashing into each other, or into anything.

The one critter that really surprised me was a scorpion — in a sleeping bag no less!  I didn’t know that the hills and mountains of the Pacific Northwest were a natural habitat to scorpions!  I am so glad we looked in that sleeping bag before letting anyone crawl into it.

And I almost forgot about the little green frog that jumped onto my forehead when I uncovered some damp cob we were working on.  It was cold and clammy but luckily I was not afraid of frogs, so I placed it aside in a more suitable place.