The wildlife

Our pet parent’s home backed onto a green belt.

I was quite happy with seeing all the birds pass through the back yard (cranes, egrets, cardinals, mourning doves, and mystery songbirds, something that looked like a buzzard maybe, and I swear I saw a pelican fly by), and watching the squirrel shenanigans, and seeing the mini gheckos dashing around, UNTIL the other pet sitters told us that they have seen deer in their back yard!  Mmmm yep, then I was jealous. 

We came home late from Walmart one evening and I had a tiny tree frog hiding behind the poinsettia.  

It decided that my bare calf looked like a good place to land as I walked up to unlock the front door.  Did I shriek?  You bet.  But then I laughed as it jumped off and I saw that he was just a wee bit bigger than a quarter.  This was also something that I have experienced before – a much larger frog jumped on my bare skin when we were playing pool one evening in Cuba a few years ago, and I screamed, startling rather a lot of people, and very likely the frog as well.

Did we see any alligators?  I did!  It was swimming along just breaking the surface of the pond, close to the private road, right in the community golf course.  I would say it had a snout maybe 6 or 8 inches long.  Just the snout and the eyes were above the water line.  We weren’t playing golf - nobody tries to retrieve the lost balls once they hit the water!

We considered going on one of the boat tours to see the dolphins and manatees, but it would be at least 1.5 hours to get there, and likely more than that long again to get back as traffic seems to get much heavier later in the day.  So for this trip we skipped doing the touristy things, in favour of just being mellow and hanging in the community.  It was just so relaxing there!  Pickleball or a walk, BBQ some lunch, go for a swim, chill in the screen room, repeat.