Never saw a firefly until I was an adult and I certainly never expected to see them dancing in the middle of the city.
Living on .07 acres in an urban environment, there’s more concrete, asphalt and buildings than dirt. The house is 20’x40′ on the first floor. There’s a 900 square foot garage on 3 sides of the property line in back and an asphalt driveway. What little open space there is in the back has been covered with years of mulberry mush and somewhere underneath there’s the remnants of a brick patio.
Most of what little dirt there is I covered up with landscaping fabric to keep the feral cats from using it as a litter box. When we lived next door, there was a pretty sizable colony that just formed over the years. Then the local cat rescue people came through to help out the colony. They put down a few due to feline leukemia and kitty aids to prevent them from suffering. The ones that could be socialized were adopted out. The most recent batch of kittens went down that path. A few truly feral cats were returned to the site with our permission.
For many years they did their thing and we did ours. They really only wandered through on one mysterious errand or another. Then my ex decided that I needed to start feeding them after he moved out.
He took 2/3 of the household income with him and thought that was a good time to be dropping off a 20 lb bag of Meow Mix so that I could feed the ferals. Really dude? But I am a softie and the core group was getting up there in years.
There was Bob the brown tabby, Nero the void, Mr Fluffy a grey and white monster who lived up to his name. The queen was Princess Kitty, named by a four year old in the full grip of princessmania. She was a calico and the largest of the bunch. It was her batch of kittens that were socialized and adopted out.
So I started feeding them and kept on doing it. At first they would stay pretty far away and wait for us to go back into the house before coming to eat. Over the years they got more comfortable with us but they were still feral. PK let me pet her head on my birthday once. Best gift that year.
Eventually I set up a couple of plastic tote shelters. They’re double walled and insulated and wrapped in those silver thermal sheets. They’ve had many winters in there. We even deliver the food to them when the weather gets bad if possible. If the snow is deep we put it on our back steps and they will come that close to eat. Neither I nor the youngling are going to shovel across the yard to the shelters under the garage awning. The kitty trails just aren’t wide enough for us.
Even before the lure of dry kibble we had a fair number of critters wandering about. There was always the occasional opossum, skunk and Chuck the groundhog lived in the yard next door. The ferals would occasionally leave us a gift of a headless snake or mouse carcass. The raccoons spend early summer getting drunk off the mulberries that ferment in the puddle on the garage roof. It’s hysterical to hear them chittering, fighting and throwing each other off the roof, especially at 3 a.m. I’m up anyway so why not enjoy the show.
Princess Kitty became eternal this past winter. In true feral fashion she just left one night, never to return. We had been having problems with a new feral, Hank, who was trying to take over the shelters. We were down to just PK and Nero so they weren’t able to fend him off. We did what we could, but we couldn’t be there all the time to run him off.
I think PK was just sick of his shit. Sick of shit in general. I can completely understand that. She’d had problems with her left front paw that eventually cleared up. When she started having dental issues and couldn’t comfortably chew the dry kibble, I started feeding her wet food. That really perked her up for a few years.
She was so old though. So tired. I hear you kitty. Her last couple of years she just hung out in her shelter, slept and emerged for breakfast, dinner and the occasional walkabout.
15 for a feral is about double their expected lifespan. I hope her end was warm and peaceful. I hope all our ends are the same.
Hank and Nero eventually came to an understanding. They were even able to be side by side in the shelters during the worst of the weather. They both wander a lot though. Haven’t seen Hank in a couple of weeks and Nero was last here when there was a crazy racoon in the yard. It was late afternoon and the racoon was looking everywhere for food. He even went into my clothespin bag that was on the retaining wall ledge and chewed up a couple of pins. The youngling and I watched his antics from inside. Usually raccoons are heard, not seen, because they come after dark. I went out to rescue the pins and it ran into one of the cat shelters and was hiding about as well as a toddler.
We left it in peace and it was just hanging out in the shelter. The next time I went to check the fireflies were out. They live in the rotted woodpile up against the fence. Once upon a time I used to sit out in the backyard and burn things in a fire bowl. Now it’s a urban oasis for all sorts of interesting things so I just leave it alone.
I was inside the house, looking out the back window, watching the fireflies dance and the racoon was across the yard doing the same.
Am I finally evolving into the bog witch I always wanted to be? My favorite place to play as a tween was in the swamp behind our suburban house. Here’s me, just hanging out with my racoon friend, watching the fireflies.
For the past week it’s been life under the heat dome, a hot and humid nightmare. The last few days it’s even been doing that Florida thing of the heat and humidity building up during the day till the air can’t take anymore and then afternoon monsoons. Afterwards, the heat and humidity return tenfold. Eww.
We’re lucky enough to have a couple of window ac units. The central air died during the plague years and I don’t have the $12K to replace it. This has led to an odd existence during a heatwave. Moving about the house from somewhere reasonable to disgusting, to an area that will be decent in a few hours when it’s time to go to bed because we just turned on the ac unit. It’s better than nothing so we cope.
After about a week it starts to get really stuffy inside though. The air is stale and everything is sticky. I don’t like sticky.
This morning a new front blew through and had cooler and drier air behind it. I opened up every door and window to blow out the hot and sticky. Washed all my bedding, changed the sheets and was even able to get another 2 loads washed, hung and reasonably dry on the clothesline because of the stiff breeze.
When I was pulling the white sheets off the line there were these long, oblong bugs on them. I shook them off before bundling it into the basket. When the firefly show started up again a couple of hours later I realized that’s what they were. The mosquitos aren’t out tonight because it’s too windy but I guess that doesn’t bother the fireflies.
So I stood there in the window, watching them dance. Enjoying the cool breeze and thinking about the hot shower and stiff, clean sheets to come.
