Remember my friend ‘Matthew’? The city dweller who moved out to the country, only to be confronted by every plague known to human kind? I’m putting his story -yes, I went through the data dump to find it!- in the extended entry, in case you’re lost.
Seems there is a new enemy afoot. Or, was, until he shot it. A 6 foot Gator. Now… what I want to know, seeing as how he’s tied a rope around the base of its tail… what could that thing be bait for?? What’s next? Ogres?

Oh, no. I just got an image of Shrek, strung up like a gutted deer on Matthew’s front porch….

Or maybe he just wants to watch the buzzards try to land on the water?

Man vs. Nature
My friend Matthew lived in a large metropolitan city. He’d purchased a modest house in a desirable section of town 10 years ago and successfully remodeled it himself. It had taken an entire month of hard work, but the results were ample compensation; when he was finished the modest frame house had become a warm home, replete with gleaming wood window hangings, doorways and floors that came alive, happy to be loved again.
It was always a pleasure to come home to the little house, to once again walk through the door of what was so much his.

Though he loved the little house, Matthew grew tired of city life. After all, the houses were set so close together. The pollution levels were spreading, even into his neighborhood. Traffic in the city had always been a problem but seemed to worsen with every year. The perks of having everything he might need close at hand evolved over 20 years into a sense of those things closing in on him. He needed more than the little home; he needed fresh air to breathe and room to move.

Matt bought some land far out west of the city; ten acres of wooded splendor that included a small pond and grazing deer. His new neighbors would include people who had also escaped the confines of civilization - each living on their own ten acre parcel in sprawling homes, usually centered on the land, thus giving each the perspective that they are alone in the world.

Clearing the land where he wanted the house, fashioning a road of sorts, obtaining a builder and the necessary permits… all these things took time, especially during the rainy season. Before he knew it a year had passed, and still no work had begun on the house itself.
Time moved forward, barriers were overcome by patience, dry weather and perseverance. The concrete was finally poured. After the slab went down, the rest of the house went up rather quickly.
Almost two years after buying the land, Matthew moved into his new home.
It’s a beautiful home; 3,000 sq ft set in the middle of ten acres of woods. A wrap around porch and dormers give testament to the past while modern technology nods convincingly to the present. And he loves it wholeheartedly. Again he’s managed to make a home his own, this time by overseeing every point of its construction.
Matt can look out his kitchen window as night turns to day and watch deer come to drink at the little pond and listen to squirrels chattering in the trees. There are all manner of wild things, and he continually searches for a way to fit into the life in the glade; trying not to upset the balance of nature overmuch.

This is, until he noticed the scorpions. It was pretty hard to not notice them; they sought to take up residence with him, creeping slowly over the sandy soil up to his new home. Whether in greeting or an attempt to oust the newcomer, they gained entrance to the house and garage -previously thought airtight- via whatever means necessary. Matt found scorpions in his drawers, in his cupboards, even in the furniture. After consulting an expert he found an easy way to identify them: they glow in the dark! As it’s very dark out in the country, all he had to do was look outside at night to see them creeping silently about; thousands of them glowing eerily. Likewise, to intercept them inside the house before receiving a painful sting, he turned off the lights and looked around. They were everywhere.
For a couple of weeks he vacuumed, swept and carefully picked them all up, finally ridding himself of the things. Since the expert had recommended putting grass around the house as soon as possible, he had several pallets of sod delivered and placed. Scorpions like a sandy surface, and find it difficult to climb over blades of grass.
By and large, his scorpion problem was solved.

One morning about four days after the sod was placed Matt sat on his front porch with a cup of coffee and surveyed his yard. Since he’d watered judiciously, the grass seemed to be taking off; green with vitality. There was but one fly in the ointment: a sudden brown patch. Thinking one of the pieces of sod had given up the will to go on, he dismissed it as normal and gave it no more consideration.

The next morning the entire expanse of healthy green had turned wilted brown. Dead, just as the one patch had been the day before. Matt was wounded; he’d done everything right. What could have happened? An examination of the sod proved that the roots had been eaten. Eaten, unless a St. Augustine death squad had come through the night before, bent on revenge for past indiscretions; but that didn’t seem likely.

The following morning Matthew had his coffee in the kitchen before looking out onto the yard; he was somewhat wary and wanted a buffer of normality before facing whatever might greet him outside. The grass was still dead, but nothing else seemed out of order. Unaware he’d been tense at all, Matt felt his muscles relax as he smiled and opened the front door.

As he stepped outside a slight popping noise made him look down… onto an army of worms. There were millions of 1″ cutworms, or army worms; so named because of their penchant for destroying a crop and moving, en masse, onto new ones- all of them on his porch. Evidently their eggs had lain dormant in the sod, not hatching until Matt started watering, and upon eating their fill decided to find new territory- but his house was standing in their way. If he stepped on one it would pop open, a gruesome green color that stained his brand new porch.
Something broke in him right then, while he tried to sweep the worms off the front porch without breaking them open. Matt drove to the nearest store that sold pesticides and purchased 5 times more Diazinon than was needed for his yard.
This was war. No quarter was to be given; no less than a full victory accepted.
As he spread the pesticide Matt could feel the balance of power shifting. Small, helpless things ran before him, anxious to get out of his way. Yes, this is the way it’s supposed to be, he thought. Man against nature. And he won.
A few uneventful days went by; finding Matt relaxing into what one might call a false sense of security.

One morning when he arose it was dark outside. After a quick look at the clock he concluded there must be a storm brewing. Pushing aside the blinds the cause of the darkness became apparent: love bugs! Actually named Plecia nearctica, they aren’t bugs, but flies that have migrated north from Central America. Whatever, they can be the bane of one’s very existence.
They were so thick it was as if a curtain were shut against the windows; so plentiful outside it was hard to breathe without inhaling several.
The balance of power had again shifted, and Matt was feeling uneasy. It took days for the love bug to subside, and even longer to deal with the leftover effects; dead, squished, splattered bugs to be washed off almost every surface.

One day after the flies had finished copulating and the air was crisp, Matt again sat on his porch and looked with pride and satisfaction upon his property. An errant piece of grass caught his eye, so he walked out onto the lawn. It had started to come back, and looked like a mangy dog, but at least was growing. But he couldn’t understand why it looked “plucked”; pieces sticking up at intervals. Did he have a gopher? An armadillo?
The next day more strands of grass seemingly stood on end. Again, nature was taking over. Matt decided to stay up all night if that’s what it took, just to catch the intruder in the act of pulling up his lawn. He sat on the front porch with a shotgun until 4:00am, but saw nothing. No varmints, no critters, nothing to dispose of so life could return to normal.

The next day he slept in, and upon rising looked out the window… and swore. Crows, very large crows covered the lawn, each pulling on the grass in their attempt to get to the bugs underneath. Grabbing his shotgun, he ran out onto the porch and fired. He only bagged one crow, but it’s staked out in the middle of the yard on a stick as a warning to the others. Relating the story to a friend they joked in return that next he’d be plagued with locusts. Sure enough, the next day he saw a cicada.

I told him that if he looks out his window one morning and sees four horsemen to just go back to bed. I haven’t heard from him since.