We’ve seen a lot of very cool critters around the property, but this one might just top them all. The other day I checked my trail cam that I just put up in the driveway. It had only been up about a week, but I thought I’d give it a check anyway. Well to our surprise there was a good-sized cat walking down the driveway towards the garage. We think it was an Ocelot, but Ruben seems to think it was a juvenile jaguar. Either way, it was exciting to see a beautiful wild cat that size walking on our property.

We’ve got a driveway dinger to let us know if someone is coming in the yard or if there are any animals in the driveway. Usually, it’s just birds or squirrels or other small animals that we usually don’t get a chance to see. The other day it went off and there was a small fox walking towards the house. He must have heard or seen us as he turned back around and headed out the gate, but not before Kelley could snap a couple of pictures.

There are a couple of Rainbow Ameiva lizards that hang out around the deck out back. They’re medium size lizards that are very colorful and will let you get fairly close to them before they move away. They must be a mating pair as one is quite a bit larger than the other and they are usually seen together. The males can get up to 18″ and the females up to about 14″ in length.

A few days later the two Rainbow Ameiva lizards were out in the open mating. Kelley managed to get a bunch of pictures of what we assume is a rare sight. Soon the female will be laying her eggs and we will have more of these beautiful lizards around here to help keep the insect population down.

The other morning there was a lot of commotion in the trees just off the porch. Kelley grabbed her camera and spotted a bunch of Coatimundis in the trees. It was a big family of them with a lot of small young ones, we estimated there were somewhere around 25 of them. They eventually all came down a tree single file and were on their way. I think they were actually here showing their young ones where the best pineapples are for next season.

And we still have the two little Agouties that are roaming around the yard all day. As the sun goes down we will be sitting in the garage with lights and music going and it doesn’t seem to bother them at all. They will be twenty feet in front of us just doing their own thing. Plus we’ve been seeing a few Toucans around. It’s like having our own private zoo.

Well, we just picked the last of our pineapples of the season and they were delicious. Out of all the plants we have, about a quarter of them produced a pineapple this year. The rest of the plants are healthy and should produce next year. This season we ate a lot of fresh pineapples, froze some, and dehydrated a bunch. The pineapples might be gone till next year, but the good thing is that our dragon fruit is just starting to ripen.

It was time to pull out all the pineapple plants that were done and replace them with more slips and rooted tops. The slips should produce next year and the tops the year after that. After planting and replacing everything around the yard there were a lot of slips and tops left over. So we took them up to our other lot and planted them around the coconut trees. Now all I can picture is Pina Coladas in our future. At this point, we have somewhere around 300 plants that should produce for the next two years. As we were planting the new ones we noticed three plants with little pineapples developing, so maybe in a month or so, we will have a couple more.

We’re looking at getting a new wheelbarrow for when the pineapples are ready next year. It might be an overkill, but like they say “Go big or go home”.

A friend of ours called the other day and asked if we were interested in some wood planks he was selling. There were four 12′ x 18-24″ slabs of live edge cabbage bark lumber that had been drying for about four years, at a price we couldn’t resist. My thoughts were to square up one side, connect them together, and make a big table for the back patio. After Kelley and I unloaded them from the truck, we decided there is no way we would be able to move a large table by ourselves. Cabbage Bark is a very heavy, hard, durable wood that is used in the construction of bridges, train tracks, docks, boat building, and more.

If I decide to build a table I’ll just have to round up a bunch of people to help move it. When finished, Cabbage Bark is a beautiful piece of wood that will last forever. We have a small entertainment cabinet made from Cabbage Bark and it took four people to move it into the house.

Here’s a little food porn for you. We picked up 5 lbs of chicken wings the other day. They were going to get fried like we normally do, but I had an idea for something a little different. What if we brine them in the same brine we do for our bacon and then smoke them with some hickory chips? After four days in a bacon brine and a few hours in the smoker, it was time to see how this experiment turned out. They were great and the opinion was that we need to make these again. We had some leftovers for lunch the next day and tried to criticize them and decided that there was nothing we would do differently next time. So if you are looking to do something a little different with some chicken wings, definitely give this a try, I’m sure you’ll be impressed..

Where do you live? 🤣🤣🤣

Rural: If you stand naked on your front porch and no one can see you… it’s rural.

Urban: If you stand naked on your front porch and the neighbors ignore you… it’s urban.

Suburban: If you stand naked on your front porch and the neighbors call the cops on you… it’s suburban.

That’s about all for now, time to go sit on the porch and watch for more animals.