Nature at My Door - Part 1

I live in a townhouse on a quiet dead-end street. Most of the homes are on the other side of the street on a ridge overlooking the south coast of the island. From my home, I get a bit of the south coast view over the rooftops and between the buildings, so I spend  my time looking at the view facing north - wild land that was still in sugar cane when I moved here thirteen years ago, but now it is what we would call “rab land” - wild tamarind trees, wild grass, gorse bushes, woman’s tongue trees and assorted other wild vegetation.

My home has a very small back yard, most of which is occupied by a deck. I spend time each day sitting on the deck just observing nature at work, mainly in the early morning and later afternoon. Within a one hundred square foot area of my back door, there are countless birds, insects, reptiles, and other creatures - a veritable zoo!

The deck alone is home to many lizards, beautiful green ones with bright lemon yellow throats, smaller brown ones with pale green stripes running the length of their bodies from nose to tail, and in the evening, the slave lizards (also called white lizards) come out to play ... and hunt for their supper.

I’ve watched the green cock (male) lizards face off, extending their yellow throats threateningly before engaging in what appears to me to be a very vicious battle for supremacy. They become locked together, rolling across the deck floor like wrestlers on the mat, legs and tails entwined making it difficult to tell one from the other, and remaining like this until the weaker one breaks free and retreats with a bloodied body.

The lizards are not bothered by my presence, possibly because they sense that I am not a threat nor mean them any harm, and there is one little “friend” that waits while I water my small potted herb and vegetable garden that is clustered in one corner of the deck, and then drinks from the leaves. It just sits there waiting patiently. These same plants are frequented by gentle lady bugs, which come to feed on the aphids that feed on the flower buds of the purple and yellow allamandas that are just outside the deck. Honeybees come to feed on the nectar of the basil flowers (would be interesting to try the honey!), caterpillars feed on my tomato and broccoli plants, and there is the occasional moth or butterfly fluttering by.

Sometimes a praying mantis may come to visit - tiny delicate ones that are just about two inches long, and the bigger ones that we call stick insects, that are about five inches long - many a time I have reached to pick up a twig off the deck floor, only to find that it is a stick insect. And at certain times of the year, we get millipedes - little ones that we call Christmas worms and are just about an inch long that give off an offensive odour if you happen to squash them by mistake, or the bigger ones that are about two inches long and have yellow and black rings around their bodies, or the really big brown ones that are about four or five inches long. They don’t do anything but when there are lots they are a bit of a nuisance especially when they get in the house, and give a nasty crunch if you happen to step on one or close the door or window on it.

To be continued ...