Mango Cottage Life

Remember this handsome dude living in our goldfish pond from a number of weeks back?  Weeeeeell, after a heck of a lot of researching and matching up this fact and that fact, I’ve finally solved the mystery of what kind ‘he’ is.

There were 4 possibilities, a pig frog, a green frog, a southern crawfish frog, or a bullfrog.  Right off the bat I could rule out the pig frog and the green frog by the voice and the lack of dorsal folds.  Could pretty much rule out southern crawfish frog too because of the same reasons, but there were other things that were reminiscent, like the spots and mottling and white chin and belly and small size of the tympanic membrane.

That left bullfrog.  Bullfrogs have no dorsal fold, are big, lots of green, the males have a distinctive call, and they have LARGE tympanic membranes.  My frog didn’t have a dorsal fold, was big, had the distinctive call… but had negligible tympanic membranes, not much green – mostly gray with mottled spots and stripes.  Things just didn’t totally match up to make a definite ID.

Discovered one more clue.  Southern crawfish frogs have back feet with webbing that extends only about half way.  Bullfrogs’ webbing goes full to the tip of the toes, except for the long middle one.  I hadn’t seen my frog’s feet in a spread position… would have to see that while it’s in the water.  Most every night when I take the dog out for his last potty before bed, I take a look at the goldfish pond for my frog.  Usually I can see ‘him’ sitting on the edge, like in the picture.

A few nights ago I found ‘him’ in the water in an open area with hind feet fully visible.  They were fully webbed!  BULLFROG!

But what about the teeny tympanic membranes?  And the spotty mottling coloration!

A little more study reveled that the coloration was within normal variations and that females had small tympanic membranes and white chins that could be mottled with gray (males had yellow chins).  So, looked like I might have a bachelorette bullfrog.  Except, this frog did male bullfrog calls.  Still more research revealed that the females can and do the calling too sometimes, which really gets things confused and in an uproar during mating season… another story.

So, seems I have a young female bullfrog in my goldfish pond… young because we’ve watched her grow tremendously much over the summer, and because of the mottled coloration.  How she got here?  Haven’t a clue, but I’m glad she is… I like her.

Now I need to find her a name.

My poor poor chickies… poor things are molting.  Poor Buford has lost all his tail feathers and much of his mane.  The Girls pick on him… come up behind him and poke his little naked tail nubby.  His comb is flopped over most the time, he walks funny because his spurs are soooo long (expecting them to fall off any time like they did last year… look like little miniature elephant tusks, so cool… going to use them in some beaded jewelry of some kind one day)

And on top of it all, they’ve lost roaming privileges because of one of these.

I was out hanging clothes on the line, heard some chicken growling coming from the chicken yard.  A first year red-shouldered hawk was spread eagle (should that be spread hawk?) up against the chicken yard fencing having a little face to face discussion with Sir Buford.

No one seemed particularly impressed, except me.  They didn’t seem concerned that juvie hawk was bigger than they were and could have had one of them for lunch if that fencing hadn’t been there.  Juvie was only slightly annoyed at my presence, flying about 20 feet away to land on top of some trellising in the garden – then into a tree that overhung the chicken yard (there is netting over top too, so not to worry).  Blacky, the dog, didn’t like that at all and started yelling at Juvie… who promptly flew off to the wooded area south of us giving a squawk of disgust as it went.

Keeping in line with self-sufficiency and homesteading philosophies here at Mango Cottage, we hang clothes outside on a clothesline – we have a dryer but rarely use it, only when we absolutely have to.

Today I did whites.

Today our back neighbors have a tree trimming service trimming their big oaks, cutting down diseased and dead tress, and chipping it all in a GIANT chipper/shreader machine.

This creates huge clouds of sawdust, dirt, dust and grime.

The wind is blowing our direction from their yard.

My clothesline is near to and runs parallel with the fence that separates our yards.

I’m grateful I don’t have to wash clothes by hand.  Too demoralized to even take a picture.

Nuff said.

Every year after the first big rain in May and a rousting night of Froggy gone a courtin’, Mango Cottage’s goldfish pond is filled with various globs and strings of little black treasures inside little clear spheres.  But this year, not so much.  The rain came.  There were froggy courtin’ sounds.  But no eggs and no tadpoles.

We seem to have 2 bachelor frogs living in the pond (a southern leopard frog and the frog in the picture which I’ve not positively identified yet because it has conflicting characteristics).  No girls, but not for the lack of the boys trying.  Every night we hear the ‘Honey, Baby, Sugarpie’ calls of the boys, but no returning froggy girl giggles.  It’s all rather sad.

Another thing missing this year is the Cuban treefrogs.  Usually there are quite a number of them around, both seen and heard.  This year, after a colder spell of winter than we’ve had in a while, I’ve neither seen nor heard a single one.  After our cold spell when things warmed up a little I found a number of dead lizards and Cuban tree frogs around the place… and could smell many more.  Perhaps nature is putting things back in balance.

For the last hour or so there has been a sheriff deputy car with lights parked at the corner of our lot.  Deputies are walking around, looking, checking out yards.  A sheriff’s helicopter is circling the area overhead.

One would think we’d be worried.  But no.  It’s just a typical Sunday morning here at the metro-urban homestead.

I have knappy bad chickens… very naughty birds.  Here’s a picture of them caught caught caught… rolling around in the dirt taking a dust bath under a bush in the backyard.  Rolling around in the dirt taking dust baths is fine, it’s a normal thing for chickens to do.  But, these chickens weren’t supposed to be in the backyard doing it… they were supposed to be in their chicken yard doing it.

You see, my chickens like to dig.  I’m not talking about scratching in the dirt looking for tasty morsels, I’m talking about digging.  Holes.  Deep holes.  Deep enough for a whole chicken to get into and not be seen from up top.  Can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked out the window at their house and yard to do a chicken check because I’ve heard a hawk or squeak or some other strange noise, and be missing a chicken.  Out I run in a panic only to find the missing one poking around in the bottom of a hole looking up at me with that “Wha?” expression on its face.

Sometimes the holes turn into mini-trenches.  And sometimes when those trenches are next to the fence, well, they just go right under, and so do the chickens.

They know they aren’t supposed to be out of their pen, unless we let them out.  Yesterday when we returned from an outing, we found the chickens running amok in the backyard.  When they saw us they froze, eyes got real big, then they all ran to the door of the chicken yard, ready to go back in, and feigning ignorance about how they had come to be on the wrong side of the fence.

Naughty naughty birds.

Homesteading in the city is different from homesteading in the country. But not in ways I’d expect it to be different.

In the country I expected wild animals to be my biggest problem.

In the city I expected wild people to be my biggest problem.

It’s turning out to be just the opposite.  In the country I had to deal with trespassers all the time, but never had to deal with wild animals — they were there: foxes, bobcats, raccoons, ‘possums, skunks, coyote, armadillos, even a panther… but they never caused any trouble and I never had to deal with any of them.

Here in the city I’ve had no problems with people.  But I have had to deal with rats, squirrels, cats and dogs, bizarre insects, raccoons killing my chickens, and now…. ready for this?  A BEAR!!!!

Never in a million  years, not in my wildest dreams would I have expected to see a bear, a BIG black bear in my backyard here in the middle of the Orlando metropolis, concrete in every direction for miles and miles, among many hundreds of thousands of people.

But there it was.  Raiding the beehive.  Poking around inside the fenced yard and outside the house for about 3 hours checking everything out.  Peeking in the back door.  Dragging a few things around.  Could tell how big it was by seeing how high it’s back came against objects it walked past… which turned out to be about waist high on me.  I’d say it was well over 300 pounds.

Black bears are usually shy of people, but this one didn’t seem to care one way or the other and pretty much ignored us, despite all our arm waving and shouting.  Just looked up at us, stuck out its tongue, licked the honey off its lips, and went back to what it was doing.

I could see some potential danger here — for us and the bear too.  Called 911 and to my utter amazement discovered that there is no one that responds to calls about a big black bear in your back yard in the middle of the metropolis.  We were on our own.  FL Fish and Wildlife said leave it alone and it will leave when it’s finished.  Told us the best deterrent is a 3 wire electrical fence around the hive (a few days later I received a packet from them with bear info, how to construct the electric fence, and a nifty black bear silhouette magnet with bear facts for the fridge.  A little late but I do like the magnet.)

It looked really really bad.  But when we checked the damage next morning there really was very little.  The hive was not broken, only knocked over, and the bear only ate 1 and 1/2 frames of the honey.  I set the hive back up and the bees went about their business like nothing had ever happened.  Two good things are that it gave me an opportunity to inspect the hive and motivated me to harvest the remaining honey.  Got about 3 gallons.  Not bad for a little backyard beehive.

Just in case the bear decided to come back, we built a fortress around our lone little hive — caged and electrified.  Either it’s working very well or the bear hasn’t come back.

The lesson?  Urban homesteading, city self-sufficiency, is an adventure… always expect the unexpected and be prepared — most of all, enjoy it.  And if you find a bear in your back yard, well, leave it alone and it’ll go home, waging its tail behind it.

What a perfect Valentine’s Day present.  One of our ‘girls’ laid her first egg.  You can’t really see the slight aqua tint in the photo, but it’s there.  That tint tells me that it was one of the 2 Americanas.  A quick vent check leads me to believe that it is probably Blondie, the white Americana (supposed to be unusual)  Poor girl has a gimp foot but she manages fine and is beautiful.  The ‘girls’ (there are 3) are only 4.5 months old, still small, and this egg is small – just fills the cup in the palm of my hand.  I’m sure the eggs will get bigger as the ‘girls’ get bigger… they’re only young teenagers now.

Did you know toads have a vocabulary… croaking isn’t the only noise they make?  And they have a temper too!  I didn’t, not until today.

We grow our gardens using organic methods here at Mango Cottage.  That means good bugs, moisture, organic matter and stuff in our garden beds.  It means toads too.  I’ve discovered the toads like to ‘live’ in the corners of the raised beds, burrowed down in the cool moist soil.  It’s September, BIG planting month, so we’re getting any empty 4 x 8 raised beds ready to be planted.  The toads living in the corners DON’T like it!  They pop out of their holes and screech at me – sounds like a tennis shoe squeaking on wet grass.