Jenn: Not a Friend to Nature

Local wildlife may want to take note and vacate the premises. My track record has been less than stellar lately:

1. While mowing the lawn a few days ago, I spontaneously stop the tractor to yank the weeds from around a sand cherry shrub.

Yes, I hear urgent peeping while doing this.

No, it does not occur to me that the peeping is coming from the the weeds I'm pulling. Until I glance down and notice the teeny baby bird hopping frantically around in an equally teeny nest. Still downy and fluffy, he obviously is not old enough to fly. Crap.

I carefully arrange the weeds back over the nest and pray that I haven't just doomed the nestling to discovery by predators.


2. Last night we finally caught the groundhog that moved in under the woodshed in a Hav-a-Hart trap. She unleashed a stream of profanity-laced chitters and squeals at me when I went back to check the trap. I seriously had no idea that groundhogs could be that loud.

Girlfriend was NOT PLEASED, and managed to convey her displeasure by peeing inside Daddy Shortbread's trunk when he loaded her in for deportation. (Luckily, he had anticipated this and placed a plastic tray under the cage. Even so, the stank was such that he had to leave the trunk open the rest of the evening).

She was humanely released across the river in an open field. She is now free to go dig under someone else's woodshed and pee in their car.


3. Today I was zipping around on my tractor mowing the lawn, when I vaguely noticed movement in the grass ahead of me.

(Side note: the backyard grass was abnormally high this week since I ran out of gas in the tractor before I got to mow the backyard. Rather than drive to the gas station and fill up the gas can, I decided the backyard could wait until the next mowing. Mostly because I'm afraid of filling up the gas can at the gas station.

Like, abnormally afraid. It's not like I had a bad experience filling a gas can, but I have a strong gut feeling that Something Bad could happen while I'm filling a gas can. So I make Daddy Shortbread do it, and he didn't feel like doing it right then.

Possibly because I forgot to mention it until 9:00 that night.

Is it still a side-note if it's longer than the narrative? I must remember to check).

Anyhoo. Mowing. Movement in tall grass. SNAKE. Little black stripey snake right in front of me!

I guess I could have swerved to avoid him, and I didn't. But I did squinch my eyes shut at the last second, though, and I think that would convince a jury that I was remorseful and they'd probably just give me manslaughter. (Snakeslaughter?)

The way I rationalized it while I finished mowing is that since the snake was on the same side of the house as the bird's nest I disturbed, and since the snake might have killed the baby bird, and it was my fault if it had found the baby bird, then it was total karma for me to kill the snake.


I'm hopeful that my Unintentional Reign of Terror is at an end.