Animal Friends at Whispering Pines Farm

                                  
Today I saw a lovebug on the car windshield. Now I'm bracing for an invasion sometime in Sept. In May and Sept. we had so many sticking to our white doors at the farm that we would have to brush them away to get inside. But that's not all we had at the farm. To begin with, when we first moved there in 1996, we lived in a mobile home while we remodeled our house beside the lake. That summer we encountered an invasion of fire ants inside our house. To escape them, our cat slept on top of the house at night!

Thick pine trees surrounded us and deer would come out of the woods to the edge of the water to drink. You could wake up in the morning and see them come out of the woods to drink the cool water, often bringing their babies along. One day I saw some big black squirrels with big, long bushy tails come out of the woods to get some water. I had never seen squirrels like these and learned that they were called fox squirrels. They stayed in the tall pine trees. A little red fox had a den in the woods and would walk along the fence to hunt for food. He would cross the yard several feet from our house and stop and look our way and then go on.


In the spring we had the biggest turtles you can imagine sunning on old logs in the water. Once a beaver tried to establish a home and we frightened him away just by shooting into the air and he became frightened and fled. We put some carp in the lake to eat the algae and we loved throwing food to them when company was around, and they would jump up for the food and roll around in the water like dolphins. Wild turkeys liked to strut about in an open area at the edge of the thick pine forest. A big blue herron claimed a stake at one end of the lake and the red-wing blackbirds and kingfishers would fuss at him. And then there were those pests of the lawn and garden - the armadillos. We used a wooden trap to try to catch them. At night you could hear owls in the trees. We had so many birds I lost count. I loved hearing formations of geese flying overhead in October, with some stopping to stay a few days on their way south.

We had a wooden deck and screened porch on the back of the house and little green and brown anoles (lizards) sunned there almost year round. It was fun to watch those little guys "show their money" by puffing up their red throats. Once a friend was visiting and we were watching the little green lizards on the screen of the porch. He laughed and asked if we ever thought we'd be sitting and watching lizards play when we retired!

Our only pet was P.J., a large gray-striped cat. He kept stray dogs abay and warned us if a snake was around. He loved hunting in the woods and kept down the rat population in the area.
Mostly he loved to sleep on a shelf by the kitchen window during the day since he prowled at night.


We sold the farm and moved to Elba in November 2003. We had to work so hard to maintain it that we didn't have time to do anything else, and we were getting older. It was fun creating a beautiful place.