You might want to look into Baby's Breathe, Lavender or Thyme for your area. Snakes will be in any groundcover but maybe Thyme's aroma might keep them at bay. Here is a link that might be useful: Propagating Perennials

Hi Nancy ... we do enjoy all of our woodpeckers. They all come to the feeders. I create a bird buffet on our front porch each winter to have a large covered area of comfort for them. Heated birdbath and such. We get to see the pileated babies also and their hairdos are something to behold. Could we call it spiked? We had a nest of them in our next door neighbors yard a few years back. That was really cool to get to see them feeding, etc. You can see the those photos begin here. You can close the window and look to the left. I was blessed to get a short video of Pale-billed Woodpeckers in Costa Rica with a baby popping in and out of the hole shouting for food. It was pretty high up in the canopy so it's a bit shaky but the parent returns with something and he really pops out of that hole. The parent seemed to be bothered by me, so I stopped filming to leave.

Good to see a report from my favorite herping spot. Black snake. Fast. Bookin' it through the grass. Definitely a racer. Too bad ya missed it.

Unless it's a big nest, or you see more than one nest in the box, I'd suspect plain old House Mouse rather than a Deermouse. Deermice are country mice, Housemice are urban/suburban. Deermice live in groups of up to 10, so where there is one nest, you will often find another. Cold weather means tiny little herds of deermice are trying to move in where it's warm, which is why I have two cats living in the kitchen/back porch. One is a great mouser, the other is a great goof off, but they keep my kitchen rodent free. Otherwise, if I didn't have the cats, I would use glue traps, but only because: (tender hearted soul that I am) 1) This is a farm, so I have plenty of open land to let them go. 2) I know how to get almost any animal off a glue trap without harming it. (other than an insect -sorry, but I've not had much luck saving spiders or crickets) The secret is cooking oil. Corn oil, cheap-o vegetable oil, if you're feeling really bad about making the vermin suffer, you could use extra virgin olive oil, but really, it doesn't matter. Just slide the glue trap and the struggling varmint onto a cookie sheet or sturdy piece of cardboard to support it while you carry it outside. (In our case, that would be outside and at least a 1/4 mile away from the house, but just outside works if you're in town) When you get to the release site, just set the cookie sheet/cardboard down, and pour corn oil over the rodent. Oil disolves the glue in less than a minute, and your greasy little varmint will have pulled itself off the trap and will be staggering away into the grass. The rat/mouse/chipmunk/baby squirrel will take care of cleaning itself, which is why you use edible oil. Lizards, frogs and toads don't clean themselves, but it won't hurt them either. If you catch a bird, you'll have to carefully wash the oil out of it's feathers with dish soap, like they do for seabirds caught in an oil slick. This is also what I'd suggest you do if you catch a litter of kittens. (which happened to one of my neighbors, who called me in a panic about it)