Those are beautiful Annie.I've been seeing more of them around here as well,usually on the butterfly bush and the dahlias. There was a smaller BF on one of my potted impatients on friday,don't know what kind it was,but it let me water the plant and didn't even fly off.Of course i steered clear of where he/she was feeding, Talked to my sister in Washingtonville N.Y. yesterday and she told me when she went out in her yard saturday,the deer had made an overnight visit and ate all her plants,and some of the deer were still up on the hill eating from the apple tree.She was very upset,as i would have been as well. Kathi

How about an update, mboston?

Debra, I see THE Sooner migration every year and it is really a sight to see. LOL Sometimes I walk the dogs on those big travel days and stand on a bridge over I-35 and watch the endless procession. It is amazing. I am well familiar with the UT-OU rivalry, having grown up in Texas (Fort Worth) and having been stupid enough to go to the State Fair of Texas a couple of times on football weekends when I was a teenager. We learned pretty quickly to pick a different weekend in future years because the football fans take over the fair on "that" weekend. LOL That was back in the wild and rowdy days in the 1970s and 1980s when the Longhorn and Sooner fans turned the streets of Dallas into a crazy street party/pep ralley the night before the game. Dallas would have every available cop on the streets and filled up the jails....and still the fans partied on. I think the weekend lost some of its "spirit" when the city of Dallas started clamping down on the street parties...they kind of ruint that great tradition when they started making so many rules and so many arrests. I'm sure the streets are safer now, but the street parties and pep rallies are missed. You always knew the weekend would be full of 'interesting' news from the street parties and ralleys. The world is a meaner place, now, and I guess if the street party type pep rally nonsense was still allowed, it'd probably result in violence. Oh, the good old days.... And, the way I keep track of the Texas State Fair IS the OK State Fair because I know the one follows the other. Being closer to Dallas than to OKC, that's the fair we usually go to, although sometimes we make it to both. One of the radio stations sponsors some sort of 'rest/meal stop' for the OU fans as they journey down. Some years it is in Paul's Valley and some years it is in Marietta at Carl's Jr. You always know when it is 'almost' OU-Texas weekend because the gas station/convenience stores in Marietta put out big displays of OU merchandise. (And, yes, you OSU fans, they put out big displays of OSU merchandise too.) Bob, What kind of grafitti do they put on the bridge? I assume it is pro-OU and anti-UT? Jay, We got a laugh at those people's "we're winter Texans" comment. Every year, we get to meet at least a couple of these snowbirds in a most unfortunate way. Without fail, once or twice each year, an RV will catch fire traveling down the highway in the fall (or when headed back north in the spring) and our firefighters will be dispatched to put out the fire. Needless to say, by the time the firetrucks arrive, the RV is fully engulfed...they are highly flammable and burn fast. The smart 'snowbirds' disconnect their vehicle from the RV and save the vehicle at least. Not too long ago, our son was driving down I-35 in Texas and saw an SUV pulling a flatbed trailer holding another SUV. Unfortunately, the SUV on the flatbed was on fire. They got the people to pull over and our son and another guy who stopped to help were able to disconnect the flatbed and save the first SUV. Unfortunately, the road sloped downhill and the trailer with the burning SUV started rolling backwards into traffic....it is a funny story to tell now, but it wasn't funny at the time. Four or five other guys stopped and helped our son get the trailer with the burning SUV out of the traffic lanes, and then the fire dept. (our son's wife had called 911) arrived and put out the fire. It was quite a spectacle. One thing I never knew before Tim and Chris became volunteer firefighters (which led to Chris becoming a professional firefighter) was how often vehicles on the interstate catch fire.....semi tractor-trailers, pick-ups pulling big horse trailers, regular cars, buses, etc. You name it, if it travels down the interstate, it can burn. We have a small fire extinguisher in each of our personal vehicles, but they won't put out a vehicle fire unless you catch it the very minute it ignites. Still, we always stop and try to help someone when we see a vehicle afire by the side of the road. Dawn

Thank you for asking. In the fall it is when the snakes begin traveling back to their winter dens from parts far away (and in the spring, of course, it is when the snakes leave their dens and begin traveling to parts far away). Snakes overwinter in the same den year after year and some of them will travel several miles in the fall to return to their dens. Migrations mostly happen in central states like Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, and Kentucky and places farther north where snakes spend their winters in large communal dens in bluff. Farther south snakes can den almost anywhere (a stump, a rodent hole, etc.) and thus they don't den in large concentrations. In some places if you are between a denning bluff on one side and good habitat on the other you can walk along and actually see the snakes migrating. The snakes will all be coming from the flats and heading to the bluffs and all will be on the move in the same direction. On a good day during peak migration you might see as many as 50 to 60 different snakes in a three hour walk. On a more typical day during the peak migration you might see from 12 to 25 snakes in three hours. At the early and late ends of the migration (which lasts for about 2 months) you might see just 4 or 5 snakes. It's really a neat thing to observe!