Possums, raccoons, and crows. Oh my.

"Why must our yard be Jumanji?” B asked me the other night. As I stepped over some blood and a large crow’s black feather on my way to the get the mail yesterday, I wondered this too, especially because we have not one blade of grass to call our own. What is so attractive to creatures about our cemented patio?

1. There’s Hoover. A busy, bustling hummingbird that B and I named—I thought vacuums and B thought J. Edgar. Hoover built a nest that held her (I just realized she has a man’s name) three eggs before they hatched into mini chirping hummingbirds who recently learned to fly...or hum.

2. There’s a very, very large squirrel that ate my first tomato, chomps on the berries in our tree and spits them out on us while we sit outside, and basically thinks he owns the joint. He laughs in our faces as we spray the hose at him. B put out these sticky, gooey traps. When we returned from vacation last week, one trap was peculiarly hairy, and we haven’t seen him around lately.

3. While chillin' with some company late at night on our patio, we heard what we thought were footsteps on the front walkway. Turns out it was four raccoons, bug-eyed in B’s flashlight, but again…nonchalantly turning away as if they had every right to be there. B grabbed the hose again.

4. Two raccoons attacked a big black crow on our patio. We heard the most agonizing cah-caws coming from the crow. By the time we got out there, two proud raccoons were strutting away and the crow was laying belly up, blood splattered, feathers everywhere. To put it out of its misery and to save our ears from the cah-cawing, B grabbed the shovel. Suffice it to say, the thing would not die, and I’m pretty sure B scared the neighbors with his antics. But I think the crow who seemed to keep coming back to life was scaring him too.

5. I was up early Monday morning to take a friend to the airport. "Watch out," B said, as he returned from loading the car with luggage. "Why?" I asked. "There’s a big possum out there."

Jumanji I tell you.