Living in Hell

There is an artificial waterfall in our back yard made of some nice stone, and a small fountain in the front yard also made of rock. People have always noticed the unusual numbers and varieties of birds that flock here, especially now that we no longer have a cat. For a while we had an opossum that found a place to build a lair too, but we had to trap it and release it in the wild because our standard poodle would spend the entire day hunched down at the lair entrance wondering what kind of act of God had made its home there.-------------------------------------------------------------------Let me digress yet again and mention that our poodle is a cossetted creature if ever there was one, so he thinks that other living creatures are objects of fascination and play but not aggression. Once he was running around our small country place at twilight while my husband and I strolled here and there enjoying the evening, and I noticed he had found something under a tree that had captured his full attention. He would approach and then leap back, having a great time. There was not enough light for me to identify the object of such interest, but then I saw the creature beat a retreat---well, not the whole creature, I saw his high, black and white tail.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"Oh my God, TootSweet has found a skunk!" I yelled. When I finally got the dog to come, it was obvious that the skunk had missed his mark--TootSweet is fast on his feet--but the silly mutt had made a careful exploration of the spot where the emanation had landed and he had dragged his ears through the stuff. Such is his personality that I fear if he evers encounters a skunk again, he will have just as good a time, having learned absolutely nothing.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Returning to my point, our weather has been so dry and so hot, our wildfires so abundant, that our yard has been a refuge for everything from mountain parrots to woodpeckers to hummingbirds to white winged doves. Yesterday was so hot that the plastic cap that holds the hummingbird feeder just gave up and let it drop to the ground under the magnolia tree. Our grass is just a breath away from giving up the ghost. No amount of watering can protect it from these temperatures. But no matter. The windchimes are singing and the birds are too in my back yard in spite of living in Hell.