Fancifowl - RELAX! No harsh feelings between us Farmers, please! As for me, you can own as many rifles as you please! I trust you with that. And consider you to be a reasonible person, not one that shoots the paper boy every morning for trespassing, now do you?!? (Again: Just kidding you!) Seriously: It's not other peoples business to tell you what to do and what not to do. Period. As I layed out in my previous post: The toughest laws and rules will not help against peoples greed and stupidity. 'Disease control' is used as an excuse to force AnimalID through. The real reason behind it is: Take away farming from us Farmers. If they (Monsanto & others) get their patents through - then woe to us all!!!! This is just the beginning. Are we going to let that happen? Disease control again: Laws on it or not: In the end, all comes down to common sense. There will be always a chance your stock/flock gets hit. 'Cause sh*t happens. My first suggestion to keep diseases at bay: Provide the best environment, the healthiest food, fresh air, keep them out in the open whenever possible. Just care about them. Look after them - you will notice anything strange straight away. Rose PS: What about Earl Butz? Don't know a thing about him. PS: Fancifowl, please look into it: Go to www.greenpeace.com - search for 'Monsanto' and see what's coming up.

I see trees in Victoria sold under false pretense also. Since Washingtonia palms are cheaper than Trachycarpus (hardy) palms, some nurseries in Victoria will sell them. People see cheaper trees and purchase them. For the life of them, some can't see the difference between the two. Washingtonia is marginal and causes confusion when it is lost while Trachycarpus is mint next door. Some gardeners quit on some exotics because they have failed. -Because they have simply planted the wrong thing. It's like San Fran has palms but they don't cultivate coconuts. People assume that nurseries will sell the right stuff. Many plants in Victoria are sold with the wrong label. Some nurseries don't even know that they have false labels because they don't know their plants. They just sell them. Victoria is great for granny plants or English Gardening but I find them very inadequate with exotics. Shopping for plants in Vancouver is quite interesting. There I can chat with nursery people who know about the latest plants and exotics that can be grown in zone 8. Prices are also better. I know a hobbyist here in Vic who grows Puzzle trees from local seeds and the nurseries double the price on his baby Puzzles. He also grows Windmill palms from local seeds. Some in Victoria think that these palms have sterile seeds. Probably because they don't realize that it may take 3 months to germinate. Many in Victoria don't experiment. Sometimes you must learn for yourself. I was told (before I had moved here) by folks in Ontario that there were no Sequoia specimens in BC. The plant world is so big that it's amazing what we don't know. Even about the zones and possibilities within our own country. I show photos of the BC coast to people in southern Ontario and they are shocked or think that the pictures cannot be true. Is BC that far from the rest of Canada? Maybe the information age will draw us closer? Cheers Here's a garden in Victoria with proper exotics: Here is a link that might be useful:

Elizabeth reminds me of a "spoiled brat", that thinks she is better than everyone else. She claims not to be racist, but I bet she doesn't have any Black Friends either. Sherry is a "air head", but she put the "hush" on Elizabeth yesterday. Saying, "I let you talk, now let me talk". Barbara whispered "watch it" to Elizabeth yesterday when she kept interrupting and put a hand up in a position of discipline. Watch Whoopi and Joys body language when Elizabeth speaks. I don't think any of the panel likes Elizabeth. Gayle

Thanks for getting back to me, Catherinet. I did a little more reading and found out that like rats, the newly born opossums are hairless and they do have teeth like this picture (downloaded from the internet) here shows: I also realized that the opossums do build nests like birds do on the tree, but they can also build nests elsewhere such as under the hoot of a car (as pictured above). Close to where the dead animal was found were a couple of huge trees among other fruit trees I have in my yard. We had Hurricane Hermine blowing down things for us this past week. I think that might help explain a lot of the mystery as I begin to piece things up together. A family of opossum might have taken residence there. The young could have died in the nest earlier on or it might have died when the wind blew it down from the nest. The limbs could have easily chipped off as it fell down from a height. Since they're newly born, I would imagine their limbs are very fragile. The fact that the skin peeling off might be due to the animal drying out at some point and then having to stay out in our hot sun here for who knows how long until I discovered it. These speculations are all very plausible and it made a lot of sense to me now as I've seen mature opossums around in my yard sometimes. I think not to suspect anything else ... unless I see a repeat of a similar incident. I know ... I'm always nervous when I see dead animals lying around. You don't know what they carry with them ..., but RIP little guy and no more carcasses in my yard! Thanks again--I do appreciate your input.