interesting sandy. i knew the vit k treatment but i didn't realize it was heparin! which leads me to my mystery, though i never would use poison bait. it is all this talk of rats and mice. someone is trying to move into my romeo's sleeping box in the shed. but my reason for posting is quite hilarious- he went to investigate why my 15 some pound bag of composted manure was moving. i am standing at the back door and hear "SQUEEK!" i wish i saw it, but alas i had only my tshirt and undies on and it was still daylight. hey, i work midnights, ok? :) i had a mental picture of it jumping in the air and squeaking at the same time. the big oaf ran out of the shed, belly to the ground, and wanted back in the house. that surprised me. my old man at romeo's age would have had his whiskers twitching in anticipation. so, my mystery continues....though maybe in the process we have discouraged our visitor. i also took the top off his sleeping box to make it less inviting. i have found no rear projectiles. i am also considering leaving the feeders empty for awhile. i would hate to do that. just sharing a story. i didn't want to start a thread just for it. it almost applies.

In Colorado I saw a hummingbird buzzing around the Agastashe 1 week ago. It does seem a very late! I know that hummingbirds can survive freezing temperatures because in the mountains here there can be year-round frosts, and I've gone camping in June and woke up to frost dusting the ground (and the tent) while the hummingbirds were busy flitting around like there was no problem. Hummingbirds are extremely common in the Rocky Mountains all summer and you'll come across swarms of them around meadows especially when the shortened growing season has everything blooming all at once. I've heard that hummigbirds migrate based on a biological clock, not food - and that there are frequently stragglers - so it's a good idea to have a feeder out to help the stragglers make it. I wonder if they are also adapting to environmental change? Regardless of whether or not you want to point to climate change (and personally, I absolutely would cite that), it's also a fact cities extend the growing season an additional couple weeks in each direction because of the heat island effect, and also provide an abundance of non-native, late-blooming plants growing in gardens (for example, brugmansias!) that are not normally present this time of year. Maybe human populations are serving as a secondary "corridor" for the hummingbirds to migrate later than they did 200 years ago! Cities and towns certainly do form chains that would be easy to migrate along. It would be silly to think some species wouldn't take advantage of the environmental change humans bring just as much as some other species are negatively affected.

My garden and house caters first and mostly for my dog - he's the most pampered pet you can imagine :-) This includes his own doghouse in the garage (that he hardly ever uses, but is used by the roaming cats in the neighborhood, much to Timmy's distress), an enclosed front porch with doggie door, basket, rug and private sofa, free roaming of the garden, two more beds inside the house, etc. You get the picture - he's the king of it all :-) As for wildlife, since we live on the foothills of a small mountain range and part of a natural park, we do get quite a lot of critters. We have a birdbath that is used not only by the birds but also by the bees and wasps, of which there are gazillions (we are in a honey producing area). Birds in the garden include sparrows, robins in Fall and Winter, loads of blackbirds, gold finches and a multitude of others I can't name. Last Saturday I saw my first swallow of the year. Above us on the hill we can frequently spot hawks, of which there are some colonies in the park. At night owls are a frequent visitor and we can hear their calls many times. Cuckoos are also a familiar sound as soon as Spring is here. I have a lot of evergreens in the garden and this provides excellent nesting sites for the birds. Preferred are the bay trees, laurustinus and the conifers. I'm constantly finding nests whenever I prune anything. I had a resident bat for about a year, sleeping in a closed garden umbrella we had on the patio. Unfortunately I had to remove the umbrella because the wasps decided it was a good place to nest, so it had to go. I was already stung twice, didn't want to be stung whenever I opened the umbrella! Still, bats visit frequently and it's common to see one or two flying around the garden at dusk. Some years we have glow worms in the Spring, which I absolutely love. It's magical to see them hovering around the garden at night. Other assorted critters include geckos, small lizzards, snakes, mice (yuk!), crickets, locusts and the occasional hedgehog. In terms of specifically catering for critters, I keep the birdbath going all year (we don't have hard freezes) and try to plant things I know will be used by the wildlife. This includes berry shrubs like pyracantha which are a major hit with birds in the cold Winter months. I also have a weeping mulberry tree and let its production go to the birds, who have a feast with the fruits. The compost pile is also a good feeding ground and there's a little bird that spends hours there hunting for the small fruit flies that proliferate inside the pile. Butterflies are catered for with things like lantana, mock orange and buddleia. I need to add more larval food to cater for butterflies, but haven't come quite up to it yet. I don't use any sort of chemicals in the garden, don't even spray the roses, and this of course translates into a welcome sign for critters, even if it means that slugs and snails are huge, sigh... I don't use a slingshot to get rid of them, like Edna does ;-), but I do throw them onto a neighbooring field that is kept wild. All in all, I consider a privilege to have wildlife in the garden and have been slowly educating myself to encourage it as much as possible. Eduarda

I can't help but wonder, Jane, if those are gifts or tips. I suppose it's a question of attitude (and crows certainly have attitude) - I can see them leaving something for the wait staff.... Of course, they may actually be heart-felt gifts and I'm just being too cynical. Even if it's a tip at least they like the service. Pushing the envelope again, I observed the migratory passage today of a mobile feature in my extended back yard - very very extended. The Mayflower II passed by my house today during its migration to the wintering area of Mystic Seaport. Mayflower II Restoration Ship Shape Update: Return to Mystic! With my trusty camera zoom I saw this: Mayflower II being towed by Jaguar. There's a nice website where you can track the tow vessel as a proxy for the Mayflower. My father worked in the shipbuilding industry, and when we were kids we would watch ships pass by on the way to the Cape Cod Canal. My father would often drive us to the canal to beep and wave at the ships, particularly if it was one he had history with. The ships would often beep back. In the same vein I drove to the Canal to see it go through. I just barely made it to Scusset Beach in time to catch the rear end passing by. Claire