Wildlife

Neither Michelle nor I are animal people, and this is fine. We specifically chose farms that worked with crops, not with animal products. However, just because you don't choose animals doesn't mean that they won't choose you. Lizards and scorpions have been sighted in our bedroom, for instance. Spiders and webs are a daily occurrence, but that's cool with me because they keep the flies away.

During our first weekend here, all five of us WWOOFers were plagued by a noise throughout the night that caused us to lose sleep. In the fireplace in our room, there was a dormouse. It had been eating the wooden roof and had apparently fallen down and not been able to get up. It scratched and scurried all night in an attempt to get back to the roof, but it was entirely unsuccessful.

Pia was so excited for us. She thinks dormice are cute, and she showed me and Michelle pics of different kinds of dormice on her phone. I tried to sound interested, but let's be honest, I had the horror of killing over 10 mice in my apartment two years ago in NYC. I didn't need to see mice in pictures. Miranda, who likes small furry creatures, thankfully took it upon herself to rescue the dormouse using only a cardboard box. It took a few tries, as the mouse jumped out of the box continually and thought that climbing up the chimney was the only way out.

Kayla, meanwhile, had a "God moment" while pondering how much she couldn't stand that mouse keeping her awake the night before. She related to us--in parable form, no less--that we are the dormouse, scratching away while trying to climb out of the hole we've fallen into. God is Miranda with the cardboard box, offering us an unknown and scary alternative to what we perceive to be the "only option." Obviously, Kayla explained, God's way is the best route for everyone because He can see the whole picture. We just have to trust Him.

Wow. Who knew that dormouse could be such a benefit?

In other news, the yellow jackets are what bother me. I didn't know I had such a strong aversion to them until this week's dolcetto harvest. Yellow jackets like sweet things, such as honey and nectar. Well, dolcetto grapes are pretty daggon sweet, and they were everywhere. I was particularly nervous because our full intent in harvesting the grapes included taking them away from the flying yellow and black bodies. I just knew these yellow jackets were going to attack. I kept my flannel on in the hot sun for entirely too long because of it. I mean, we didn't look like bee keepers, but there were definitely too many swarming yellow jackets to count. We kept hitting them with our bunches of grapes, too, as we flung them into the basket. We didn't have time to think about their feelings, and they really needed to get out of the way. I'm personally convinced that Italian bugs are docile. I think I saw one yellow jacket sting a dog that was biting them out of the air, but otherwise, they remained calm. Nonetheless, I saw killer bees when I closed my eyes to sleep that night.

A couple days before the harvest, Michelle and I were cleaning out a woodshed and came across two separate hives. I actually dropped one and then sprinted toward the donkeys at full speed ahead, but to my surprise, these yellow jackets didn't follow me or even really try to escape from their bucket. They just moved lazily along like their world hadn't been shattered by an idiot recycling old plastic. The other one was on top of a pole, and Michelle hit it a few times. The yellow jackets weren't scared and neither was Michelle. That must be a nice feeling.

I'm sure there will be more interesting stories about wildlife in Italy, so stay tuned as we journey from farm to farm!