Birds, Bugs and Bears - Oh My!

Springtime in CT - the sun is shining, the grass is growing (in our case, the weeds are growing), plants are starting to poke through the dirt - bring on the birds, bugs, and bears!

Birds: For some reason, nasty big black crows like to hang around our yard. They mostly hang out in the back, behind the fence. They don't really do anything, but they are loud and probably one of the ugliest types of bird around. Micah thinks they are great. In any case, I wonder, what attracts them to our yard? We also have a couple of pretty cardinals that have been hanging out in the "burning bush" in our front yard - I like them!

Bugs: We are a buggy yard - might be due to the woods in the back of the yard. Spiders love our yard - we get huge spiders making their homes in the corners of our house (outdoors). Last year there was this huge (think body the size of a quarter, then the legs) brown, super fast moving spider that made a web outside next to our chimney. Every day when I went outside to get Emmalee off the bus in the afternoon I would go and look at it - as soon as it saw me, if it was in it's web, it would run and hide in a crack in the chimney (did it really see me or just sense danger?). And every single day, I would completely destroy its web. I have to say, it was pretty amazing how quickly it would produce a new web. But anyway - the bugs are back in force. The baby flies have hatched - there are small flies all over the yard, and some have gotten in the house. Emmalee HATES bugs. She flipped out the other night over a fly in the house. It was walking up the front door and she was trying to kill it with her shoe. She kept missing. I told her just to open the door and it would fly out. She was afraid to get that close to the fly (I guess it was near the handle). I explained that flies hang out near doors and windows because they can see the outside and that is where they really want to be, not in our house. So if she opened the door, it would leave. Now I don't know if that is true, but it sounded good, and I thought she'd think so too. She turns on her heel to me and says "How do you know that - you are not a fly expert!" Attitude! Ever since she and Micah got stung by bees last summer, she thinks every bug with wings is going to bite her. To avoid a panic attack, I went over to the door and opened it and shooed out the baby housefly. It landed on the porch. That wasn't enough for Emmalee though - I had to step on it too, just in case it came back in when we opened the door again. I think I am in for a long summer. Then there's Micah, who, while I was outside yesterday raking all the leaves away from the stone wall, was sticking his fingers into the cracks between the stones, where many a bee hive has been found, and where more of those fast brown spiders make their homes. That's a boy for you...

Bears: Okay, so Simsbury has bears. My aunt has seen bears in her yard, which is down the road, several times. A couple summers ago, a friendly policeman drove into our yard (I think we were having a yard sale at the time) and said to keep an eye on the kids because a bear had been spotted on our road, heading this way. Emmalee heard that, and is now absolutely terrified that a bear is going to come get her. She takes "bear precautions" - she always shuts the gate to the yard so that a bear cannot come in (a bear of course would walk through the gate and not climb over the fence - therefore if the gate is shut, a bear cannot get in!), and she looks for clues to see if perhaps a bear has been nearby while we have been away from the house. Last summer, something came into our yard and clawed apart a bouncy ball during the night. We definitely had a bear in our garden, which is behind the fenced in part of the yard. We saw it's huge paw and claw prints in the dirt. And we also had a bear get into our garage last summer. We had some garbage bags in the garage and Steve was in there doing something. He came out and did not shut the side door, because he was going back in. He was in the house for about 10-15 minutes and then went back outside. The garbage that had been in the garage was strewn across the front of the garage and around the side, leaving a trail into the woods. No bear to be seen, THANK GOD! What if he had gone out when it was still in there!? Also at the end of last summer, Steve was raking in the front yard and a truck stopped in front of our house. Steve looked up at the guy and he said - "did you see that bear?" - there was a bear just feet away from Steve, next to our mailbox. The bear ran across the street. Steve couldn't believe the bear had been that close and he hadn't noticed it.
So anyway - yesterday we were all playing outside and Emmalee asked me if I thought the bears were done hibernating. She made sure the gate was shut tight, and then continued playing - she is starting to get worried about bears again... and it is rubbing off on Micah now. When he and I were outside doing yardwork yesterday, he told me he heard the leaves moving in the woods and that it was a bear and it almost got him when I wasn't looking. Then he told me it was just a tiny bear.

Speaking of Micah - he just woke up and came downstairs. Steve gave him a hair cut last night - it's very cute, and short! So Micah just asked me if he still had his haircut. I told him yes and he said "can I have my longer hair back now?"