Toni, the ants are usually crowded inside the nests but "pour out" if the nest's disturbed in any way. It's a good trick to always be in the lead when hiking here. The first person to brush past a nest gets them out and the next person brushing past gets covered in them. It's funny watching someone desperately trying to get a backpack off along with clothing to get rid of the ants. I've provided that sort of "amusement" many times for my walking companions, as they have for me. No one really takes it seriously, apart from the ants. I don't keep any plants indoors at home, they stay out all year. But no matter how much you try, there's always all sorts of bugs and spiders getting into the house, they don't wait for transportation by pot plants. A lot of spiders live in the soil, some near the surface but others burrow deeper. Generally I don't worry about them, I'm more interested in what they are rather than where they are. Over the years I've found spiders, scorpions and centipedes in my bed, but I just evict them. They can go buy their own bed, LOL. Horti, that's interesting about the Harvester Butterfly. Butterflies aren't usually associated with being carnivores, but yet there are are dining quietly away. What happens when one visitor to the garden meets another visitor to the garden?

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

My yard is so over run with voles and cotton rats that I go out of my way to catch snakes and release them in my yard when I can. It drives a lot of friends and visitors crazy because I don't care if they are poisonous snakes or not, as long as they eat rodents they are fine by me. Whenever I use bird netting to protect fruiting bushes or trees I check it twice a day to rescue any snakes or turtles that have gotten tangled up in it (this happens a lot!). My neighbors used to assume I was going to chop up the copperheads but I carefully cut them free and took them over to the brush pile. I need all the rodent eaters I can get. It helps that I worked for years and years as a zookeeper and had to handle snakes every day - they don't bother me at all. I enjoy them when I see them.

I have never, ever seen one of these in the wild, not alive, anyway. The closest I've come was a flattened remnant on a highway in Charleston County. It's a good thing you realized this guy was NOT a shoe string, since this "shoe string" could very well have ended up killing you! Sharon McKenzie