Amos the dog had found a box turtle to play with. It was hard to know if the poor thing was alive or dead, but it was completely closed up in its reclusive shell, all doors slammed shut head and tail. We took it down to the stream to let it go, hoping it would revive. Nature is everywhere.

As I stepped off the bank onto one of the rock shelves that project into the water, causing ripples and eddies and little waterfalls all along the way, a shape jumped! I jumped! It slithered into the water and disappeared. I had to go look it up. The first snake I came across in the book that looked like what it was was a Cottonmouth! Reading a bit farther, though, I recognized a common, unpoisonous and quite unconfrontational water snake.

We haven't seen a snake in weeks, partly because it's summer and partly, we think, because of Amos. But with the heat, he hasn't been so active, and this perfectly common neighbor was out sunning itself on the lazybones rocks, taking a little break from its hard day, when we disturbed it.

We have a resident Great Blue Heron we see flying low over the stream some early mornings and evenings.

We have a resident green anole that likes our white wicker furniture and looks (as he knows) quite fetching lolling upon it.

Frogs are not endangered in this neighborhood. We catch them in the pool skimmer on many a morning. They make a racket at dusk.

We have hummingbirds in the yellow bell.

Carpenter bees drill holes in the eaves. Wasps and hornets nest where they please. Likewise dirt daubers.

We've had to trap a family of seven beavers that were obstructing the flow of the stream by building cams upstream.

We've seen a number of deer by the side of the road. You have to watch for them, you have to watch for their eyes at night. One bounded right in front of the car when we first were driving around here. We've come close to hitting them more than once.

This is not New York.