Author: federmaury

It’s in the 90s and we’ve been in an extreme drought for weeks now in central North Carolina. Flowering plants are dying all over the yard. The blueberry bushes are covered in shriveled berries, dried right on the branch. Even the birds won’t touch them. Leaves on the fig trees are yellowing and falling to…

I am a writer, professor, and unlikely fig farmer, tied three seasons of the year to a semi-urban mini-farm in the northern-half of the American South, with my son, half a dozen chickens, and a truly terrifying number of rats and copperheads. My book, Cat Woman in Dog Country, is forthcoming with University of Alabama…

It’s late May. We’d been in drought conditions for some time when, last week, we finally had several days of soaking rain. I could hear my fig trees sigh with relief. During the day. At night, all I could hear is this (press play below). Some nights a clown and his horn will join in…

And where there are eggs, there are snakes. This is one determined rat snake. And yet, the position of his head and tail suggests he tried to get into the coop, found it too difficult, and gave up. He was gone not long after I took this photo. If he had made it in and…