7 Sinners of Fairhope

When we settled onto a canal outside Fairhope, we spent the first year mostly watching. And what we learned is that Lower Alabama’s wildlife is not, by any strict accounting, well-behaved. Every creature on the property seems to have picked exactly one vice and committed to it fully.

Here are the seven we’ve come to know — and, honestly, to admire.

Pride — the great blue heron.

He stands on the shoreline like he holds the deed to it. One of the most common wading birds on Alabama’s water, and the least humble of them: he doesn’t visit the canal so much as receive it. At dawn he’s out there, perfectly still, waiting for the water to bring him breakfast. We’ve decided this isn’t patience. It’s confidence.

Greed — the gray squirrel.

He is running an emergency nut fund, and the emergency is always. He hoards, buries, digs up what he buried, and grabs one more like a shortage is coming. There is plenty. He knows there is plenty. He takes more anyway.

Lust — the green anoles.

Our resident soap opera. These little lizards flash a bright pink throat-fan, do a few show-off push-ups, and carry on a front-porch drama the whole spring. Native, everywhere, and entirely without shame.

Envy — the laughing gull.

He wants your lunch. He also wants his lunch, the pelican’s lunch, and whatever is currently in anyone else’s mouth. His entire feeding strategy is coveting, and he is loud about it.

Gluttony — the frog.

We have footage of a toad parked at a termite swarm, eating with the focus of a man who has cleared his whole afternoon for it. No brakes. No regrets. We understand him completely.

Wrath — the mockingbird.

Small bird, enormous opinions. A mockingbird will dive-bomb a hawk ten times its size for the crime of perching too close — and it will win. This being Harper Lee’s Alabama, we hold the mockingbird in a little extra regard, though “tiny bird, big feelings” is closer to the daily truth of it.

Sloth — the slider turtle.

The entire job is lying on a log in the sun like the day got cancelled. On a good afternoon you’ll find a whole row of them, stacked and unbothered, doing absolutely nothing with tremendous commitment. They are, as far as we’re concerned, the patron saints of this house.

Here’s the part we keep coming back to:

None of these animals are actually misbehaving. The heron isn’t proud, the turtle isn’t lazy, the frog isn’t a glutton. They’re just being exactly, fully what they are — out on the water, unhurried, answering to no one.

Which is more or less the whole point of a few days down here. Eat the second biscuit. Take the porch nap and the sunset both. Do a little less, and don’t apologize for it. Waterfront, wildlife, and room to behave mostly well.