Welcome to the neighborhood

I have already mentioned that the lovely Scully family lives just up the road from us now, and we’ve also had the pleasure of meeting a handful of our other new neighbors. We are not situated in a sidewalk-laced subdivision. We are actually on a long, dead end road and most of the houses are located on acres and surrounded by lots of trees. In fact, our neighbor across the road has an orchard in their backyard. Within our new yard, we have lots of room to run, and lots of privacy as well. It’s not like we’re bumping into our neighbors, so for people to stop by and introduce themselves, it’s completely out of their way to do so. And so far, I’ve been very pleased with the people that have come by to meet us. And I also respect the people that haven’t. And from what I can determine, we have just moved into a very friendly atmosphere, yet not overly smothering. Which is perfect. When a neighbor drives past, they wave but they don’t stop to chat. And after being hijacked on a daily basis by our last overly-nice neighbor, we are thrilled to have a little more breathing room in our own yard.

And we’ve also acquired many new non-human neighbors in our new house. You would have thought we had moved to another part of the state, as the wildlife is so much more abundant here then in our last neighborhood. We now have hummingbirds and goldfinches, and an obscene amount of wild turkeys.

Before moving, I had encountered flocks of turkeys wandering in yards and crossing the roads while I was on the north side, but I had no idea how many of these haggard, savage birds roam within these neighborhoods. It’s unbelievable. They are everywhere, picking at our grass, sleeping underneath our shady trees and having vicious turkey brawls in our backyard. You think is sounds fun and exotic, but it’s so annoying. They’re not at all scared of humans, and gobble at you as you try to shoo them away. There’s turkey poop all over our back patio, and Ruby has been so sketched out that she’s resorted to hiding under the work bench in our garage.

And it doesn’t help that one of our neighbors, who has yet to introduce himself and looks a lot like Colonel Sanders, feeds the dirty, winged beasts from his hands. FROM HIS HANDS! Every night we spy him walk onto his front porch and toss and feed cut up bread to the dozens of feathered dirtbags who are waiting in his front yard. It’s pretty ridiculous. And Chris is seriously considering buying a slingshot. For the turkeys, not our neighbor.

The kids are still a bit weirded out by the big birds as well, so whenever we leave I always peek out and make sure a flock isn’t waiting for us. And the other day, as we were leaving to head to the pool, I peeked out and saw this:

Awesome.

Now let me note that this wasn’t in my yard, but right off Colonel Sanders front porch. And by the end of their visit, they had knocked over the birdbath and nearly torn down the bird feeder.

And this isn’t our first bear encounter, as we have twice had our trash-bin mangled by the giant animals at night, who tore open all the bags and then proceeded to throw our garbage all over the yard. And the other day I was walking up to Paige’s house with Luke in the stroller to pick Taylor up from a playdate, and a bear walked across the road 50-yards ahead of me. And I immediately wheeled us around and got us into the car to drive the two blocks. That’s scary, y’all. Bears! They can rip your face off!

And because I made such a big deal about it, Taylor has since run in from the porch a few times and squealed, Mama! I just saw a bear and her cubs run from our yard to the woods! And each time I hurry out only to see nothing. And even though I suspect she’s fibbing in order to get everyone worked up, Chris and I are still in total agreement that we’ll put a fence up in the near future to protect the kids outside play area. And the trash-bin. Bears! They’ll steal all your honey!