angele [email] said at 5:57 PM 04-19-2008: This post makes me happy. I just scored some herbs to plant in my yard. I'm excited about gardening. I haven't had a yard, really since living at the dirtfarm. Even then, I only took advantage of about 2 square feet for tomato plants, mint, and catnip (why did I plant that, I don't know).
brandon [email] said at 9:10 PM 04-19-2008: Excellent foilage. I'm growing tomatoes, squash and bellpeppers, this year. But I think the possums are probably going to get most of it.
brandon [email] said at 11:20 PM 04-19-2008: Yeah, I've noticed it too. It's a little messed up. They're living in my attic. I have them in my walls. I mentioned them, because I was watering yesterday and saw what I thought at first was a bunch of albino squirrels on the ground. It was a clatch of baby possums - old enough to be away from moms just, hanging around, soaking in the daytime mammals. It was also 3:00 in the afternoon. We have some trees growing next to the canal, and there's a big one that sleeps there during the day. I took some film photos of him that I need to have developed. We have a large family of raccoons that lives in the sewers, six of them at least, they come out at night and beat up the neighborhood cats, and make growling noises that scare the shit out of the girls downstairs. I was thinking about it, though. Where I grew up, when we were kids, past our house and out to Jones Creek road was still mostly farmland/undeveloped, we'd see deer all the time. There were deer-stands set up in the woods next to Lake Forest Park. With all the development, the deer sightings, and the wood ducks, the barn owls, and the huge alligator snapping turtles, they don't really show up so often - but the snakes, the possums, and the raccoons have moved in. Just in the last month, I had to go kill a nest of copperheads at my folks house during the day, they found that there was an armadillo living in their ceylons, they get constant visits from possums and watersnakes, they've got a family of possums that live up in their huge sweet gum. It's all anecdotal. But, you know what the hell, Chicago has a large and well-documented urban coyote and fox population. Apparently they have (had) at least one mountain lion. Development causes a lot of stress on wild populations, and Mammals (and their near-mammal cousins) are good at adapting to new surroundings. With all the river's at flood stage, all the tributaries are up, too. All that shit, the comite, the amite, the tchefuncte, the tickfaw, the natalbany, the atchafalaya, manchac, all those nameless creeks, and bayous is all tied together either directly to the Mississippi or through the lakes, we've had a ton of rain, and a lot of these critters make their homes near water ways, I wouldn't doubt it if they showed some wildlife population shifts into urban areas. Actually, I think someone linked a story here about how a lot of animals were making inroads into New Orleans post-hurricane. When you drive by the old City Park golf course, it wouldn't be hard to imagine a lot of shit camping out that way.
milky [email] said at 10:49 AM 04-21-2008: The semi-recent notice of all the possums (among others) reminded me that they're building in a lot of previously wooded areas of town. I'm slightly confused...as I can't understand why they're building ALL this new shit in this town of all places. The encroachment probably has a lot to do with it. I'm starting to see birds in my backyard that I've not seen outside of the swamps. Then there's the floodwalls...I should try and tag on a newspaper pic to your last post.
I'm wondering if land development is playing a part in Baton Rouge? When I grew up down here, this place wasn't as developed and the new floodwall hadn't been built. I saw a lot of wildlife in "city," if you could call it that, but by the time I was 7 or 8, everything was gone. We haven't had an alligator in a backyard since high school. 14 years later...the building here is ridiculous. It's probably to cover a possible influx of workers that ship out for deep-sea drilling. A lot of UK cats out here on their time off at the local cantina.
shelly [email] said at 2:34 AM 04-21-2008: I really want to plant some tomato plants. But Seattle keeps getting snow. As in today it snowed again. April 20!
