Morning cacophony, ants in my coffee and a frog on my foot

Sometimes you just want a quiet first cup of coffee in the morning, settling into a comfortable chair on your patio. The sun’s just up and you watch Nature in all its summer serenity. Ha! Like that happens….

I live on a peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico side of Tampa Bay. When the snowbirds are not here, there are around a million residents and way too much traffic on 608 square miles (1575 sq km). I’m telling you this because I am amazed by the amount of flora and fauna on this bit of land, considering the amount of humanity here. Sometimes Nature here is more unnerving than the traffic.

I am a zombie when I awake in the morning and before my first cup of coffee. I have warned everyone I have lived with not to ask me questions nor ask me to make any decision before I’m fully awake, lest they suffer a severe tongue-lashing. This morning, before I was able to sit on the patio, and with coffee in hand, I had to break up a fight between two Blue jays duking it out on the patio floor. There was a squirrel in the tree next door, screaming, and others chattering. A woodpecker was incessantly rat-a-tat-tatting on the metal roof of my neighbor’s patio (I think he’s a bit nuts) and mama bird who has her nest in Mostly Dead tree, was putting out a rather unattractive screeching call that was met with similar calls from others of her kind, all the while assorted birds buzzed the backyard.

By that time there were four Blue jays on my fence and another calling threats from the far side of my yard. Blue jays can be very aggressive and their territorial calls are ear-splitting. My coffee cup, which I had put on a plant stand while breaking up the Blue jay fight, was completely covered in tiny ants and there was a baby frog on my foot–quite content to sit there. I gently picked up the frog and put it in a potted plant and went back inside for another cup of coffee minus the ants.

I decided I would drink my coffee in the front yard. I opened the door and there was a young squirrel hanging upside down on the screen door, while two others were digging in my potted succulents and an obnoxious Murder of Crows was noisily marauding the trees. I closed the door and went back to bed.

Well, at least we don’t have gators.