When Animals Attack!: Eastern Shore Version

The first weekend of June 2020, promised to be perfect - a strong breeze, temperatures in the high 70's / low 80's and sunny.  A well needed respite during these troubling times.  However, mother nature had other ideas.

Dun, Dun, Daaahhhhh.....

First I awoke Saturday to find this lovely lady Diamondback Terrapin laying her eggs in front of my garden gate.  The gravel of our driveway seems to be the perfect material for turtle nurseries as this happens a lot.

These turtles are on the EPA's "Threatened List" as some idiots used to like to eat them in soup.  I find them fascinating and a really neat neighbor to have.  Maybe having the Perry brothers as neighbors might be cooler (maybe).  Anyway, with the nest in place we've now roped off the main gate to the garden so have to use the side gate.  Score 1 for you mother nature,

 On Sunday, I decided to go for a bike ride with the Dr/Mrs (woe be unto the fool who uses the term Mrs/Dr).  In fact we had just been on one Friday - Friday as in two days ago.  I went to get my helmet and discovered that a local bird had claimed said helmet as a homestead.  Now this nest building took less than 24 hours as we had the garage open all Saturday while I was painting the patio furniture on the driveway.  We never saw the bird(s) in question.  I'm pretty sure whatever the species they have evolved to use some form of "Amish Barn Raising" process to build their nests.

Who knew birds were such fast engineers?  You know if the British XXX Corps had birds as bridge engineers in Sep of 1944, they would have been in Arnhem within 2 days.  Just saying.

Score Mother Nature 2, me 0

After surviving two very dangerous animal encounters and a raft of home improvement projects, I finally settled down to pursue my study of nature - for scenery making purposes of course.  It's a scientifical fact-like statement that the study of nature, both textures and colors,  is best done in a hammock.  After 10 minutes of so of concentrated cogitations on the form and function of ground foam, I entered a trance-like state.  I'm sure I learned a lot about terrain making while doing so.  Because the knowledge I gained was so deep, I'll likely need to take a refresher course next weekend.