Rain approaches

Posted on by

It has been dry here at our little spot on top of the mountain. There has been spotty rain around, but very little of it has fallen on us. Almost three weeks ago we watched as rain moved across town towards us.

There were at least two separate showers, one to the right of this image, and another to the left. The falling rain eventually obscured town. Then it moved closer, obscuring the ridge that is in bright sunlight in this image. We prepared for the rain. I expected raindrops to start falling on the steps down from the porch. We waited.

And then, nothing. It missed us again.

We have watched a band of rain on our weather radar app approaching us and then dissipating or splitting and passing around us many times. I think I have mentioned it before. That sort of thing is not really unusual; rain showers hit one place and miss another all the time. But it has happened so many times that I was beginning to wonder whether there was actually some geological or meteorological phenomenon that made our particular spot on the mountain less likely to get rain.

And then I talked to a bicyclist I see fairly often while I’m walking the dogs. He lives in a neighborhood about four or five miles from us and often climbs the mountain on his rides. He stopped and we talked about rain. He told me that he felt like his particular little spot in his neighborhood was also singled out for drought.

So, two places not far apart that have some strange phenomenon that suppresses rain? I don’t think so. That convinced me that nature’s rain grudge against us was an illusion. It seems like it happens a lot because we notice it when it happens, but we don’t notice it when it doesn’t happen.

But we still need rain.

Cicada song

Posted on by

It’s cicada season here in Georgia. They are everywhere in the woods. Their song is loud, droning and constant during the day. At night the crickets take up the task of constant song, and the cicadas do intermittent solos. If you are the kind of person who needs complete quiet at night, you can’t sleep with the windows open.

As for me, their sound tends to fade into the background, and I mostly don’t notice it. When I walked the dogs on Sunday, we went all the way down the mountain and then back to the top before I suddenly woke up to the sound. It was hard to believe that I didn’t notice it before. I recorded this video strictly for the sound.

The buzzing was amazingly loud. What you can’t tell from the video sound is that the buzzing seemed to circle around me. There was a constant sound all around, but overlaid on that was a louder buzz that seemed to circle around us. I don’t know whether it was real or an illusion.

The cicadas this year are almost certainly the annual type. I think, based on the images here, that ours are Southern Resonant/Great Pine Barrens Cicadas. Georgia also has 13-year and 17-year cicadas, none of which were due to emerge this year.

Cicadas spend most of their lives underground, eating away at grass and tree roots. When they emerge, they climb up a vertical surface and moult, leaving their exoskeletons behind to be picked off the bark of pine trees by little boys.

They die soon after mating. We occasionally find one in its death throes on the driveway. The dogs are fascinated by them. They nose them and then when they start buzzing, they want to eat them like crunchy little treats. Mollie the cat also sometimes brings them in, usually unharmed. Then we have to push the dogs out of the way so we can scoop them up and toss them back outside.

Henry’s birthday

Posted on by

Today, September 2, 2020, would be my brother Henry’s 73rd birthday.

It was about two and a half months after his 70th birthday that he called me and said that something strange had happened. That was the observation in an ultrasound of spots on his liver, and his doctor’s implication that it foretold a distressing diagnosis. Eventually we learned that the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer, and it had spread to his liver and other organs.

The doctor guessed that Henry had about a good year to live. He died 216 days after his 70th birthday.

Henry will never be older than 70, and I am catching up to him. I will pass him in December, and then I will no longer have an older brother.

Speaking of toads

Posted on by

This large toad was sitting right under our garage door Saturday night.

Toads have been almost nightly visitors since we moved into the new house. I think they find the driveway in front of the garage good hunting grounds because we almost always leave a light on all night. The light attracts bugs, and bugs suit toads’ appetite quite well. They are ambush hunters, so they just sit and wait. This one was pretty fat, so it must have ambushed quite a few bugs. And that’s OK with us.

I call it a toad, although frog would be equally accurate. All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. Frogs tend to have slimy skin and they seldom venture too far from water. Toads have dry, warty-looking skin (sorry, fella), and can stand dry conditions longer than frogs. We have almost no water around our driveway, so even without the characteristic dry skin, it would almost have to be a toad rather than a frog.

Toads are mostly nocturnal. I don’t remember ever seeing one during the day. You might wonder where a toad goes to sleep during the day. I know: shoes. At least sometimes.

Leah and I leave some shoes in the garage close to the door into the kitchen. Leah has one pair and I have four, each with its specific use. When I go out, I take off my slippers right outside the kitchen door and slip on one of my shoes. Once when I did that, I found that something was already using it. It was a toad about the size of this one. I figured out pretty quickly that my foot wouldn’t fit with the toad. The toad jumped out and disappeared into the clutter in our garage.

A few days ago I went out and put on my dog-walking shoes. I was getting ready to lace them up, but stopped because there seemed to be something in the shoe. I almost ignored it, because sometimes it’s just my sock acting up. This time I took the shoe back off and a little froggie jumped out. I can’t believe I didn’t crush it, but it hopped away, disappearing into the clutter just like the bigger frog. I can imagine their conversation. The little toad told about the monster that tried to crush him, and the big toad said, “I told you so!”

Our toads are probably the common Bufo [Anaxyrus] americanus. Here’s what the University of Georgia has to say:

Encountered infrequently during the summer, American toads are inactive during hot, dry periods and from late fall until breeding begins early in the year. They are most active at night, spending the day hiding in burrows or underneath logs, forest ground litter, or rocks. These toads show hiding spot fidelity, sometimes returning to the same location every day. During the non-breeding season, individuals have a home range of several hundred square feet, but adults may travel more than half a mile during the breeding period. Adult American toads eat a variety of small insects including ants, beetles, moths, and earthworms.

A little later on, the article mentions that fact that these toads produce a poison in their parotoid glands and skin, which means, don’t lick toads!

The cats have never shown even the slightest interest in the toads. Sam seems to ignore them, but Zoe wants to investigate. Fortunately, all she does is sniff them. I’m not sure whether something in the odor warns her off, or she just isn’t interested because their most usual defense from predators is to just sit still and let their poison protect them.

Mushrooms

Posted on by

For the first time since we moved in here, we have large mushrooms growing in the front yard. They struggled to form a fairy ring, but couldn’t quite manage it.

They’re really big.

I don’t know if a toad could use it for a stool, but it might be handy as a parasol.

Georgia has a lot of mushrooms. A few are edible. Most are inedible. Some are poisonous. I would never pick a mushroom in the wild to eat. I just don’t know enough about them, and they aren’t really my favorite food anyway. Based on my limited research, these do not look like the edible mushrooms of Georgia.

I posted a photo of a turtle eating a mushroom. It looked somewhat like these, but I wouldn’t make a bet on it. I also wouldn’t eat a mushroom just because a turtle said it was safe.