This is very much a work in progress and one I don’t get to fiddle with all that much. It’s a big task to comb back through the archives and find the posts I like best. Check back from time to time and I will have added items or, if you’re so moved, drop me a line at rana at ranablog dot com and tell me about a post you’d like to see linked to this list.

Family Life

Of Hummingbirds and Other Critters – This post is linked to the Tejas Hummer site and gets hit all the time. I just like it because I can still see the look on Papa’s face when it happened.

Nostalgia

In the Company of Coffee – My thoughts on the brew that should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.

Papa

Luigi’s Bar on the Isle of Capri – In this entry I reference many of the stories my father told for years about his experiences in the Army Air Corps, forming a brief history of his service in World War II.

Photos

Prey – This remains my all time favorite insect macro.

I Found Him in the Beer Aisle, Honey – This shot couldn’t have worked better with the punch line if I’d set it up myself.

This tiny creature is a Snowberry Clearwing Butterfly Moth. On at least two occasions its brethren have led me all over the Botanic Gardens in a vain attempt to get a decent photograph.

I almost fell over when I started in the house from talking with the Empress in the driveway (about the impending threat of a web worm infestation, which is, in her estimation worse than the Mongol Hordes) and saw this moth merrily feeding on the butterfly bushes.

One shot in 20 came out because they are so incredibly fast — just like hummingbirds — but I’m hoping it will return so I can try for a face shot. They are incredibly beautiful, ethereal little souls.

My family fed hummingbirds in a big way. Mother boiled cauldrons of red sugar water daily and filled a motley collection of feeders which were suspended at various locations around the yard. For years we used the style so ubiquitous in Texas it’s called the Tejas Feeder. In the 1970s, a fellow in Kerrville upended an IV bottle onto a Scotch tape tin with some beak-sized holes poked into it to produce the feeders. The hummingbirds loved it and the contraption sold like mad. We tried other models sporting fake flowers and spiffy little perches, but for sheer volume and practicality, the Tejas, in my opinion did the best job.

Initially Papa hung up a single feeder outside the dining room window but the little birds proved to be so entertaining we found ourselves standing in the front room watching them almost constantly. He added a second feeder on the back porch so we could watch from the kitchen table. From there the whole business escalated and not without a certain degree of participation on the part of the birds. It doesn’t take the little suckers long to get their humans trained.

One day Mother was working in the kitchen and kept thinking she heard someone knocking at the back door. Repeatedly she went to the door but no one was there. Then it dawned on her that the sound was coming from the back porch. Glancing in the direction of the window, she was amazed to see a hummingbird hovering just outside the glass, rapping his beak on the pane to tell her the feeder was empty.

Later in our dealings with the clever little imps certain birds would fly into the garage and come up to the kitchen window purposefully looking for Mother at the sink. If they found her, they communicated their wishes in a similar fashion. Demanding, but charming, the hummers would not be denied.

The mass feedings did not come without their mishaps. Wherever the thirsty birds drank, they also splattered the sugar water causing Mother to do battle with the resulting ants. Greedy sparrows trying to steal the sweet stuff made an even bigger mess. I vividly remember the day when Papa, fed up with the feathered interlopers, grabbed a .22 rifle intent on avian murder.

Taking careful aim at the sparrow clinging to the feeder in the backyard, he squeezed off a shot. The IV bottled exploded in a crimson sugar cloud, dousing the startled bird who beat a soggy retreat into a nearby pecan tree. The side of the house and the entire end of the patio was doused in red. Mama and I didn’t say a word because Papa was a legendary shot. He just didn’t miss. Silently he leaned the rifle against the wall, walked out and turned on the hose and started washing off the mess. We went inside and kept our mouths shut.

One fall we left the feeders out too long and the birds didn’t migrate south in time to miss the first big cold front. With ice hanging off the eaves, we repeatedly filled the bottles with warm liquid to keep our little friends alive. As soon as the weather broke, the feeders came down forcing the hummingbirds to head for warmer climes.

Over the years we witnessed territorial battles for favorite feeders. A particularly pugnacious little male ruby throat posted himself on the upper branches of Mother’s rose bush under the front feeder and drove off all offenders with lightning thrusts of his rapier beak. At certain times of the summer it became dangerous to roam around the yard while the tiny birds engaged in the aerial acrobatics of their mating ritual, diving toward the ground at breakneck speeds and buzzing their sweethearts like maniacal fighter pilots.

We came to recognize birds that came back to us year after year and greeted them as returning friends. I’ve seen Papa stand at the garage door and talk to a hovering hummingbird just inches from his face who appeared for all the world to be enjoying and participating in the conversation.

A local woman who achieved fame as The Hummingbird Lady put out dozens of feeders each year. Her relationship with the birds grew so strong that she won the confidence of a nesting female who allowed the lady to perch on a ladder overlooking the nest and photograph first the eggs and then the fledglings. The diminutive mother sat protectively on a neighboring branch but did not interfere allowing the woman to produce one of the most charming sequences of wildlife photos I’ve ever seen.

Other wildlife gathered around our house in addition to the hummingbirds. For years a mated pair of roadrunners lived in the brush on the vacant lot behind the alley. In my toddler days the birds allowed me to chase them around the yard, thoughtfully slowing down to feed my illusions of a potential capture.

Armadillos and rooter skunks plagued Mother’s efforts at gardening and lawn growing. More than one of these creatures met their fate at the end of Papa’s rifle. In those days our end of town was sparsely populated and I was continually exhorted to watch for snakes. One summer when I was in high school Mother came home to find me leaning against one of the support posts on the back porch with a 4-10 shotgun draped over my arm.

She came out and asked me what I was doing and I gestured toward a lengthy serpent that had worked itself into the crevices of the brick under one of the apartment windows. In fact, the creature’s head was resting on the ledge just under the pane. Mother, ever the wildlife conservationist, immediately hollered, “Don’t just stand there! Shoot it!” I intended to, but it wasn’t that simple. The pattern on the snake’s back made me nervous enough to want to dispense with it but that window posed a problem. “If I shoot it there,” I pointed out to Mother, “I’m going to break that glass.”

Mother, bent on immediate murder, hit on the idea of going into the apartment, opening the window, and throwing hot water in the snake’s face through the screen. When the liquid startled the snake causing it to draw back in alarm, I shot it. In fact, I blew it clear out into the yard. We walked out and had a look at the thing but neither of us could identify it so we put a washtub over the carcass planning to show it to Papa later.

It seems to me we were headed to San Angelo for a day of shopping because it was evening when we came in and Papa greeted us with, “Do you silly wenches have any idea what kind of snake you killed this morning?” We said we did not and he informed us the dead snake was a decidedly poisonous copperhead, a creature apparently known to travel in pairs. For the next few weeks we all looked where we were stepping in the yard, but no second snake ever appeared.

In later years after he’d given up hunting Papa took pity on the white-tailed deer driven into town by drought to look for food. The animals’ fondness for Mother’s plants did not amuse her and she let Papa know it, so both in sympathy for the hungry animals and in self-defense he began to put out corn. His private herd grew so rapidly, Papa soon bought a deer feeder that automatically dispensed the corn at dusk, throwing the kernels in a wide arc under the pecan trees in the orchard beside the house. He didn’t have to worry about checking the feeder’s supply. If it was empty and failed to throw the corn, the deer came into the backyard, practically up on the patio and stamped their feet and snorted until he came out and remedied the situation. Many times I’ve watched in fascination as a doe approached the yard of the cattery and touched noses with a cat through the mesh in a charming cross-species greeting. Our one “outside” cat would often lie down among the resting deer and sleep with them for a while.

Here in the city I miss these easy interactions with wildlife. City animals are much cagier and more street smart. Recently in a heavy rain I slowly drove along for four block watching a drenched possum run from one storm drain to the next, poking his head in, seeing the running water, and moving unerringly to the next drain looking for a dry place. Clever urban raccoons know all about Purina dog chow and koi ponds and I know of some instances where the masked bandits have all but knocked on the backdoor asking for food.

Of course we have ranks of suicidal squirrels who barrel across the streets that run along the park below our house and each year in the driveway a handsome, rugged lizard at least eight inches long appears and suns on the brick wall. But far and away my favorites in the realm of urban wildlife are the hawks you will see perched on street lamps near undeveloped patches of land, their telescopic eyes scanning the grass for hapless field mice and snakes.

We have not treated our brethren in the animal kingdom well and we’ve defiled much of the space they need to live. The phrase “dumb animal” incenses me. Anyone who would say such a thing has never interacted with a member of another species. They’ve certainly never looked up to find a tiny hovering hummingbird tapping on the kitchen window asking for a refill, please, displaying an active and inquiring intelligence alive within a small, bright patch of life.