It's easy to forget sometimes that as developed and heavily populated as Virginia Beach is, it's really a giant suburb, equal parts city and country in some areas. And sometimes the locals remind us of the country aspect.
My house is just a mile north of the city's main road, Virginia Beach Boulevard, but it overlooks a pond and is adjacent to a wetlands area. It was a great surprise this morning when, as I was leaving the house (before sunrise, I might add), I was greeted with the trademark sound of a great horned owl. I was able to record a little of it with my mp3 player.
I've heard owls here before, but not often. I think it's been a couple of years since the last time a heard that distinctive hooting sound.
From my location in the middle of Virginia Beach I have also heard the eerie call of a screech owl way off in the distance. I wasn't able to record it, but here's a link to a page with audio clips.
My early morning drives to work at the radio station have also given me the opportunity to see opossums, raccoons, and even a couple of red foxes in my neighborhood.
The nature lesson doesn't end at work. There's a grey fox that trots through the station parking lot from time to time. And following a rain in the summertime, there's often a chorus of frogs in the drainage pond out back. These are bullfrogs that I recorded in July.
Okay, so Virginia Beach is not "Wild Kingdom" and I'm not Marlin Perkins. But I feel that sometimes, it's nice to be able to stop what I'm doing and simply listen.
The title of the post is from a Calvin and Hobbes comic, in which Calvin is screaming that a bee "the size of a Kaiser roll" is chasing him. Hobbes teases him in reply, "Life in the great suburban outback is certainly fraught with peril."
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