Warning: Do not attempt to read prior to drinking large amounts of caffeine

I would like to preface this entry with a reminder that I’ve been unemployed for the past 10 months. Therefore, I don’t get to leave my house all that often. I started this blog so that our families could keep up with us and hopefully feel that we weren’t so far away. I told my family (warned might be a better word) that I really didn’t have much to write about, that my life was really not that exciting, which would lead to some pretty boring entries. However, my grandmother assured me that she did want to read about my life, no matter how boring I thought it was. So Memaw, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Today’s entry is about: turtles. Yes, turtles. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time house hunting when we moved here to Jax. Since we were only going to be here for about 10 months, as long as we had 4 walls and a bathroom, we were happy. We looked online for a few days and took the first house we looked at in person. We lucked out because it’s actually pretty cute. It doesn’t have a fenced in backyard, which we were hoping for, but it does have an adorable little creek that runs behind it. For some reason, all of our neighbors and all of the people across the creek do have fenced in backyards, so I like to pretend that the creek is all for me. At first I was worried about the possibility of alligators (this is Florida afterall). Instead, it has tons of ducks, some kind of terrifying monster egret, and tons of other birds that hang out near the water. And as I recently discovered, turtles.

For several months, when I would open the back door to walk out onto the deck I’d hear a splash but never see what had just gone into the water. One day, the husband looked out the back window and told me to come look. Sitting up on shore and basking in the sun was a turtle. I tried to sneak outside to go see him, but sure enough, as soon as the door opened, he jumped into the water making a big splash and was gone. A few days later, I looked outside and there were two turtles sitting in the same spot. Gradually, they’ve gotten a little more used to us. The other day I was able to take Bosley outside and, as long as I walked to the opposite end of the deck before getting into the grass, they stayed where they were and didn’t pay any attention to us. I’ve really grown to like these two turtles. I look for them every time we have a sunny day and get excited when they’re there. I’ve even kind of named them Fred and Ethel (I never actually watched I Love Lucy, but those seemed like good turtle names to me). Two days ago, I look out the back window hoping to see Fred and Ethel, but instead there were 5 turtles! I was really excited and wanted to get closer. I decided to go out the front door and try to sneak around the other side of the house so that maybe they wouldn’t notice me. (I told you my life was boring.)

Sadly, as soon as I got around the back corner of the house, they all jumped into the water and were gone. I haven’t seen the other 3 again, so I'm assuming they were family just in town visiting. I assume lots of things about our wildlife, including the two rival "gangs" of ducks we have. I'll spare you details on that one. One exciting thing about our area is that a lot of ducks and birds have used this creek as a stopping point in their migrations. One day, we had 6 Canadian Geese that stopped in for a few hours. They were so big and elegant looking compared to all the ducks. Sadly, they only stayed a few hours and then continued on their way. There are 4 new ducks in the creek that are a different species from the ones we usually have here. I’ve done a little research and know that we definitely have several of the typical Mallard Ducks and a bunch of the Green-Winged Teal ducks. I’m not sure what species two of the new ducks are, but they are not as afraid of us as the others are. When we came outside with some bread, they knew exactly what was going on and came pretty close to us until the local ducks ran them off. The other two new ones are these really cool looking Hooded-Merganser Ducks. The feathers on top of their heads fan out into black Mohawks. The four of them have actually been here for a couple of weeks now, so maybe they’ll stick around for a while.

Okay okay, sorry for boring the crap out of you. At the bottom I’m attaching a few pictures. They’re not great because our camera starts off appearing further away than you actually are and only zooms in to the point where objects are exactly as far away as they appear. I’m hoping to get a new one before we move. The picture of the 5 turtles was taken from our window. Maybe if you click on it you can zoom in and see them all. I promise they’re there. Enjoy!

This is Bosley chasing the ducks. He actually got into the water for a minute before remembering that he hates it! Below are the big egrets that I'm a little afraid of.