Again, I truly apologize for the size of my pics. I'll be posting some more soon and will make the adjustment. Sherry,our pond is 20 x 17 and is 4 ft. deep at the deepest part under the waterfall and goes up to 1 foot in the shallow end. Funny, but my koi love to stay in the shallows....more plants down there I guess. I'm mad at my fish....over the weekend they ate all 3 containers I put in of ribbon grass @ $10 ea........if I could spank them I would! I even had large rocks over the pots and they still got to the roots and destroyed every single one of them. I'm keeping my fingers crossed though....my new waterlillies are still intact and I have threatened them with bodily harm if they mess with them.....yeah right....I love my babies and they can eat whatever they want.

The butterfly garden forum listers, where I cross posted, have confirmed that me calling the caterpillar a male was correct. Identifying the sexes has something to do with the width of the "bar". Anyway, he was on a mission! Pheromones are an inborn signal and his urge to find a mate was strong. People on the butterfly garden forum said they tend to return to where they were born to mate and lay eggs. I hope he can convince his mate to return to my backyard! K

Thanks, Ben. As a birdwatcher of many years, I have seen lots and lots of white ibis (not to mention glossy ibis, and the occasional escapee scarlet ibis) in wetlands all over the state. But this small group that wanders our neighborhood is funny looking. Poking their bills deep into all the St. Augustine lawns my neighbors have, and scurrying this way and that under our oaks. I always enjoy seeing them come through, and they never miss a single yard. But this was the first time one ever showed up in my fenced in backyard, and I just got a kick out of him! Marcia

Please folks, don't be naive and lose a precious pet to a raccoon. I live in very urban Sherman Oaks, CA, but have a huge yard with trees and grapevines bursting with delicious fruit. Raccoons come in summer and decimate the fruit. Recently, raccoons brutally killed 2 cats in 2 weeks. They disembowel and eat the intestines while the cat is still alive. It's unbelieveably horrible. One cat was a feral I've been feeding for a year, and the other was a beloved pet I raised from a kitten. I used to let him out sometimes during the day to commune with nature, but thought I was keeping him safe by bringing him in before dark with my other 4 cats. Some evenings, cat is playful and won't want to come in right away. That night I left for a few hrs. to deal with a med emergency... I don't when the cat was killed, but it was traumatic to discover him mauled. In reading the internet, it seems raccoons can be active in the daytime, too, especially if they are hungry or rabid. I did not know that. I will never let my cats out of the house again. I would never put them in danger of such a truly brutal death.