Category: nature encounters

I guess it’s a mast year for… raccoons? They’re all around the house every night causing a ruckus. I’m trying to deter them from coming, even took out a few, only to have more come back. In past years, we’d run into them here and there, but this year the house and its surrounding seems to be their established playground every night, it is a bit baffling. I know it’s only a matter of time before they cause damage that really stings. They’ve already been trying to get in the chicken coop.

I swear to god if you make the skunk spray I will smite all of you.

Picking blueberries, we stumbled upon this crazy looking thing.

Which apparently belongs to the largest moth in North America. We hope we’ll be able to catch it in the moth stage.

It’s a great year for fireflies, we harnessed the magic into lanterns.

I thought I was capturing the wonderful nature story of ants helping a peony bud open. Alas, looking it up I learned this wonderful piece of folklore is untrue. Peonies do not in fact need ants to break open. It still seems as though they have a symbiotic relationship, the peonies feed the ants with nectar, and the ants keep other insects at bay. They only drink the nectar and to not dig into the plant like other insects might. They do seem focused around the bud’s seams, but this might simply be because that’s where there’s the most nectar.

On this close up you can see the nectar droplets on the seam.

And I finally caught a glimpse of the very elusive fisher cat.