I live in an older suburb, pretty close to downtown Columbus. So you’d think a walk around the neighborhood wouldn’t yield too much in the way of wildlife sightings. You’d be wrong. There are streams and woods nearby, so you can see all kinds of interesting creatures if you’re actually paying attention. Which I confess I’m not always.
I’ve lived here nearly 12 years :eek: and have seen the following within 5 blocks of my house: deer, raccoons, possums, groundhogs, rabbits, hawks, and probably others I’m forgetting.
Last night, after wandering on our main street, stopping to get food, and people watching, my brother and I went for a long walk. It was just starting to get dark, so the fireflies were just starting to show off. We have lots this year - yay!
There were fireflies on all the lawns we walked past and we decided to go find the park a friend had told us about. It’s not far away, but kind of hidden, so we missed the entrance at first. After backtracking, we found the road that leads into it. There’s a small wooded area in the park and we could see right away that there were lots of fireflies in there. It was really cool, almost like Christmas lights. We wandered around in the woods for about 10 minutes admiring all the fireflies and then moved on.
We kept walking as it got darker and darker and wandered into a corner of the neighborhood where I figured we could see more fireflies. I’ve been through there at dusk lots of times. Have I ever noticed that there are…bats? Of course not. I hadn’t seen bats in ages and ages. It was really cool to see them cruising silently overhead.
Eventually, we wandered on and then cut through to the next street on a little road I’d never noticed (it looks like a driveway). As we looked up the street, we saw: two little foxes crossing the street.
Funny to see the area by light today, filled with professional cyclists and crowds wandering around watching the races. It’s hard to imagine all the little critters when there are waves of bikes flying past you.
Just a little neighborhood story to get us started. Hijack away!
GT