By Judith Roberts
Summer has arrived.
Summer nights as a child were some of my favorites. I was an only child, and growing up, I always thought it strange that my parents wanted to sit outside during dusk instead of inside, where there was AC (Hello, Louisiana summer!) and a television. After all, what were they going to watch, the birds? (More about my love for amateur birding in another column.) And while we traveled and did various activities, most of my childhood summer evenings were spent in our front yard with my family.
We didn’t have fireflies like I do now here in Ruston. My kids love to chase fireflies and it’s one of my adult favorite summer activities to watch them frolic — because, yes, in summer, you frolic – through our grass, often accompanied by our family dog, chasing fireflies. No, we didn’t have fireflies, but we had rabbits. I loved watching the rabbits hop all around in our backyard. They were so cute and fluffy, and they would just scamper around while we watched them and the sunlight faded.
I’ve mentioned to my husband how odd I find it that now that I live in Ruston, we don’t have rabbits in our backyard. In the three different homes we’ve owned here, we’ve never had rabbits in our yard. Instead, we’ve had squirrels.
Now, I’ve got to pause here and say that I understand that many of you think that squirrels are just a menace. In fact, I had a coworker one time refer to them as “rats with fluffy tails,” which is still one of the funniest descriptions I’ve heard given to squirrels. As a child, my mom and I wanted to see squirrels so much, but we just didn’t have the big trees in our yards to house squirrels.
We definitely have squirrels now, and while I do understand their annoying behavior as I’ve lost multiple bird feeders because of them, I do love watching them just as much as I enjoyed watching the rabbits as a child. My dog particularly loves chasing them up a tree. I’m pretty sure she feels a sense of pride and accomplishment at watching them dart up a tree because of her presence. She’s barely a foot tall, too, so anything that runs from her is a win, I suppose.
One other summer animal presence that I’ve had as a child and adult has been bats. I love bats. I love that they eat mosquitos, and our family will sit outside at dusk and watch our five bats fly around in the sky. We have even named them: Bruce, Wayne, Bruce-Wayne, Batman, and Frank. Of course.
I will say, we didn’t have bats long at my childhood home. My mother, who was a science teacher, put a bat house in one of our trees, and I think they startled my dad one too many times when he’d come home from work, and it wasn’t long before that bat house “mysteriously” disappeared.
As school winds down (Can I get an Amen?) and the nights get longer, my husband and I have found ourselves drawn outside in the evenings more and more, watching our kids chase fireflies, watching our dog chase squirrels, and watching the bats fly across the darkening back yard.
Summer has indeed arrived.
