Anne nearly dropped her coffee when she looked out the living room window this morning and saw the bear in our front yard. By the time I could grab the camera, our furry visitor, Ursus americanus, was making his way back up Chestnut Ridge. The most recent census estimates there are between 3,500 and 4,500 black bears in Virginia, most of them west of the Blue Ridge. Judging from what I estimate to be a weight of 300 plus pounds, this is probably a male, since females only weigh between 100 and 200 pounds. Females range a 15-20 square mile area while males range 20-30 square miles and as far as 120.

Black bears are omnivores, that is, they feed on a variety of plants and animals. During the fall they prefer acorns and hickory nuts, both of which we have in abundance right now. They also feed on small animals. We have a couple of those as well. Research tells me that black bears are shy and don’t like confrontation. Let’s hope so; otherwise, it’s the game warden and heavy artillery time.

I don’t know if the seemingly inordinate number of morning spider webs I’ve been seeing lately means anything, like a hard winter, early frost, or anything like that, but they make some cool photos. Here are a couple for your perusal.

The Grits Mess

Anne tends to eat healthier than I do, particularly when it comes to breakfast. She favors whole grain cereal and fruit or juice, while I prefer a more cholesteral laden country breakfast. On those rare occasions when she does have something sturdier in the morning, it’s usually the grits mess, a creation she credits to her Uncle Mac. You start with a bowl of grits and add whatever you wish to it. Eggs, cheese, sausage, bacon, ham, onions, peppers, mushrooms, whatever blows your hair back.

When I went back to college after the army, I joined the Vets Club, a fraternity like social/service organization of military veterans who, like me, had returned to school to complete their education. We did good work, volunteering in a number of areas to benefit the school and local community. We also partied……hard. Some of our parties were legendary, like the time Anne and several other wives mooned the governor, senator, and state attorney general of North Carolina. Parties aside though, we were a fairly responsible group. We used designated drivers long before it was the fashion. And we generally ended our parties with a grits mess, one that included all of the ingredients listed above and then some. If you’ve never tried a grits mess, I highly recommend one.

One of the least pleasant aspects of country life is the variety and number of critters with whom we often share our humble little cottage. For the first couple of Decembers  when I came down for the weekend, I found the place overrun with mice and ladybugs. The mice I expected, but the hundreds of ladybugs, both living and dead were a surprise.

Other parts of the year bring all manner of flying insects, ants, naturally, fleas, ticks, and one of my very favorites: wood roaches. The sight of one in the house causes Anne to display that most Southern of conditions known as the “hissy fit”, and the pile of mulch next to the house is full of them. {Note to self: Make sure they dump the next pile further from the house. Better yet, hire someone to distribute the stuff as soon as it is delivered.}

Our current plague seems to be spiders. I’m not talking about black widows or brown recluses, the ones that can turn your switch off permanently if you’re not careful. I’m talking about your average, run of the mill webslinger, the kind that, overnight, can spin a web the size of a pickup truck in the bathroom. Now, intellectually I know that spiders are very beneficial to the control of other insects, and that we shouldn’t kill them indiscriminately. And I don’t as long as they stay outside. I’ve watched the spider in the picture above work on that web for two days now. The architecture of a well built spiderweb is one of nature’s engineering miracles, and this one looks particularly well done.

But, should the little dude who built that beauty decide to move inside, it’s squash-city for him. I’ve been bitten by spiders twice in the last four years. Both times at night while I was asleep, and both hurt like the dickens when I awoke. They also took several months to heal and left permanent scars. So my live and let live policy with the natural world doesn’t apply to spiders in the house. I take no chances, and I take no prisoners.

Here are a few comforting thoughts. No matter where in the world you are, you’re usually no more than six feet from a spider.  And those daddy long-legs we used to let crawl on us as kids….those daddy long-legs have a very dangerous venom, one of the most dangerous venoms to humans. Luckily, their mandibles (jaws) aren’t strong enough to break our skin. Now, isn’t that special?

This day-flying moth is a member of the family Sphigidae, the same as the tomato hornworm. It hovers over flowers, in full sunlight, sipping nectar with a long proboscis or “tongue.” The buzzing of its wings produces a sound like that of a hummingbird (another member of this species is called the Hummingbird Clearwing). Its coloration, which can vary widely, is similar to a bumblebee. The moth is usually found in meadows, gardens, brushy fields and along forest edges from March – September. I shot the photo above in the wildflower meadow next to Galena Creek.

In the same area is one of my favorite wildflowers, Impatiens capensis, the Spotted or Orange Jewelweed. The small trumpet-like flowers hang from 3-5 foot plants growing in moist, rich soils in valleys and stream bottoms. Sometimes called Touch-me-not because of the propensity of its seed pods to explode when disturbed, the inside of the stem is used in folk remedies as a cure for poison ivy rashes, though several controlled studies have indicated no anti-itch properties.