Welcome to the Jungle

So a few nights ago, on my way home from a girls night out, I spotted two deer on the sidewalk near my house. I used to see deer in my neighborhood often a few years ago, when my family first moved here, but as construction increased, their sitings decreased, until eventually we just didn't see them anymore. So I was amazed to see two, after not seeing any for the past couple of years. The next morning, as I opened the matchstick blinds on a window that opens up to our screen porch, I saw a long black squiggly thing squirm its way across the patio toward the back wall. After seeing it a few more times throughout the day, I was finally able to conclude that it was a skink. Nasty little things that look like snakes, but have feet. I figured I'd let my husband deal with it when he got home. Off to the mall I went with my soon-to-be three-year-old daughter in tow. As we pulled into our driveway on our way home, I spotted a brown mound on the welcome mat at our front door. Thinking to myself that this was an odd shape for a UPS package, I approached slowly. As I got closer, I realized it was in fact a gopher tortoise. The little guy was already heading back down our front walk, he ventured down the side of our house toward the preserve in the back. With a little guidance from my daughter and I, to avoid our neighbors' dogs, he eventually made it into the woods.

Lets zoom ahead three hours....my daughter is down for her afternoon nap, and I'm done making a new workout playlist for my iPod. I head out to our garage (aka, home-gym), get distracted by the overgrown lantana and other hedges in our yard (currently with grass so high, it could easily be mistaken for the Amazon) so I start weeding and pruning and loping. As I'm discussing the recent animal sitings with my neighbor across the street, a yellow rat snake comes slithering down her driveway, across the street, into my yard, and up my oak tree....apparently, he had mistaken our yard for the Amazon as well. So, there he was, all three-feet of him, yellow with black stripes, dangling from some low branches. All the neighborhood kids came over to stare at the spectacle. Eventually, when we left it alone, he traveled back down the tree and out of sight.

The way this day was going, I was a little freaked out about what type of wild animal I was going to encounter next. Was I going to see an alligator cross my back yard? Or maybe the possom I saw eating the birdseed the other night would make another appearance. We already have atleast 20 different species of birds visiting our feeder (even ones that aren't normally found in northeast Florida.) At one point, with all the wild animal sitings in my yard in the last 24 hours, I couldn't help but think I'd been tapped by God to play Noah in the next Great Flood. The situation was beginning to feel a little too "Evan Almighty" to me. (Come to think of it, it has been raining a lot here lately....hmmm). The next thing I know, I'll be diving out of the way of a pack wildebeasts bursting through my front door. (Actually, that sounds a little too "Jumanji.") Or, perhaps, as I'm picnicing with my daughter a flock of exotic birds will land on my shoulders, as a break in the clouds above shines a focused ray of sunlight down upon me, to which I lift my head up and belt out a chord reminiscent of an aria performed by a famed opera diva. (Okay, maybe, not....that's a little too "Ace Ventura" after all.)