My little paradise

I am basking in the late afternoon sun on the patio. The little French lady sits in her fake rattan swing playing qwirkle. The shadows grow long. A cardinal sings happily nearby.
We love our little paradise. We have tried to make our patio a fake rattan paradise. It works for us. The squirrels don't find the taste of fake rattan appetizing.  They tried to eat our fake rattan glider.  I am guessing it was not very tasty.  We still have most of it.  They seem to like the mid range fake rattan as oppose to the dark, light or white rattan?

I hate to think of our patio furniture as squirrel food, but it is what it is. I find myself going to outdoor furniture stores and tasting the furniture and asking myself "is this a taste a squirrel would like?"
A good rule of thumb is: if the tree has nuts the squirrel will eat the wood from that tree.
Ah... Nature!  A lizard just slithered by for the twentieth time today. I think it is a gecko.
He isn't eating the furniture or selling car insurance.  He's become a regular visitor since we went to Petsmart and got a fifty pound bag of lizard chow.

Yesterday afternoon a pair of Carolina Wrens started building a nest on our patio.  They are cute and bold little birds.They were flying by us every five minutes with something in their mouth.
Today they seem to have lost interest. Me too. They are building their nest on my gloves, which are inside a box of leaf bags.  Now there is bird poop all over the place.

Last week our cat started making a fuss near the sliding glass door to the patio.  We thought she probably saw a palmetto bug. (More on them later)  I turned on the patio light and a full grown possum was staring at me.

 Oh, he was a handsome fellow with his pointy snout, showing a fine set of teeth and a malevolent look in his beady little eyes.  I slid the door shut, turned off the light and sent a memo to myself. No sleeping on the patio.
 It is a lovely patio.  I wish I were brave enough to go there at night.
Our cat, Madison, won't look at the patio after dark.

Yes, nature is a wonderful thing.
I look above me and I see a red bellied woodpecker pecking at our tree. They are so beautiful and majestic!
Hmmm...I thought they only pecked at dead trees. That's my tree. He's killing it.
"Hey, get away from my tree you deranged coot."
I will throw a couple of rocks to scare him off.
Oops! I hope they are not an endangered species. I guess life has its own pecking
Now back to the palmetto bugs.  They are actually roaches and they are big enough to put a saddle up and ride. I exaggerate but they are big.  The good thing is they like it outside. Inside, not so much.
If they make it inside they usually belly up pretty fast.  We haven't had too many roach funerals in our house. We insist on some type of service. I insist on a Hindu funeral pyre and burial at sea.  My wife wants the Christian ceremony where the woman screams and insist that it be flushed down the toilet and I am usually the only pallbearer.  I am not sure why we go through all this trouble.  I am pretty sure they are atheist or possibly baptist.
Ouch!  I think a squirrel just threw something at me
Uh..huh, yes. It is the same rock I threw at the woodpecker.
We have tough squirrels in this neighborhood.  I have tried to electrocute them, drown them, spiked some food with capsaicin, ambien, mentos and Pepsi, mentos and vinegar, baking soda and Pepsi, espresso and Viagra (don't use this combo.  It's expensive and the squirrels are active all night.)
I have put a lifelike  replica of a hawk on my patio in hopes that it would scare the squirrels away.
They ate it.
A neighbor had trapped three squirrels and he drove them to a park in Charlotte, North Carolina and released them and drove home.  He stopped at Wendy's on the way home to have a celebratory meal. Two days later,  three squirrels were looking in his bedroom window at 7 am in the morning.  Chattering and taunting. Chattering and taunting.  Showing their butts and eating French fries.
He swears this is true.

 Hmmm! The cardinal is still singing away in my little paradise.  He's been doing that for an hour.
He must be happy too.

I will just sit here and take in the beauty of the day while I finish off my beer.
Mmmmm...good beer! What's that? A leaf in my beer? No! Leaves don't have legs. That is an inebriated and surly caterpillar doing the backstroke.  I wonder how long he has been floating in my beer? I can't use the five second rule.  I don't know how long he has been there.  My options are limited. I can take the caterpillar out of my beer and reduce the options.
Done.
I will leave it out and let the squirrels finish it. Solved.
The cardinal is still chirping away. Don't they ever shut up. He must be happy. Maybe I will throw another rock and he will fly away.
Hmmm... Thirty other birds flew away but the cardinal still sings.
"Shut up." Still singing.
Much louder: "Shut up you yellow bellied, Sap sucking,worm eating coot."
No reaction.
Now screaming: "silence, you worthless piece of feathered crap ball.  Who to hell do you think you are? Kanye west? shut to xxxx up."
Now there is a reaction.
My neighbor is calling 911.  I told him not to worry,  I can handle this bird.  He said it wasn't for the bird. It was for me.

Hmmm, another misunderstanding, I will have to straighten out in the PD drunk tank or at the mental health unit.

It is what it is.  Does anyone know what to hell that means?