Well we get Moose, deer, coyotes, bears, foxes, squirels and a few other critters in the yard every year. We also are on the path of the migrating birds...going south and back north.....they stop in my back yard and clean out the feeders and berries and they are off again. A few stick around like the nuthatches, chickidees, purple finches and some years the white crown sparrows. Oh and the Juncos do a wonderful job keeping the bug populations down in my gardens. Swallows nest on the house across the street every year.....they help with mosquito control. LOL. There are two kinds of hummingbirds that fight over the gardens all summer...those little buggers have a big attitude! We are also visited by 3 kinds of woodpeckers. There are many kinds of butterflys and bees, and the hummingbird moths. And ewwwwwww spiders...lots of spiders...did I say EEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! its more like EEEEEKKKKKKKSSSSSSS!!!! I'm sure there is more just can't think of them all. As far as bear safety.....get educated on the subject...don't take chances. Wear bear bells if you are berry picking or out in the woods. Pick fruit as soon as its ready...don't leave any laying around to draw them in. Make sure garbage is in a bear proof container or in a closed garage. We have a bear aware program here....I check my yard everytime I go out this time of year.....before I start to garden. Sierra

Doctorant We many cattle egrets down here. And when they are in breeding plumage, they are just beautiful. Here is a little information on them. Connie Hagar was a noted ornithologist in Aransas County, Texas arriving here in 1935 and died here in 1973. She was very well respected by many ornithologist, including Roger Tory Peterson. In 1952 or 1953 she identified a cattle egret on Mustang Island which was considered the first here in Texas, but it stayed for only a few days. Then by 1956 cattle egret reappeared on Mustang Island. And today, we have them all over south Texas.

Well, one advantage you have, ksgreenman, is that you don't have to dig down several feet deep and wide to move the wrongly placed rose to its new spot -- which also has to be dug 1-2 feet down and across in order to transplant the first rose. So far this spring I have had to transplant 2 roses, and I've got 2 more coming up here in the next few days. All you have to do is carry the container to a new spot if you don't like the old arrangement! : ) Kate

Lots of things attract rodents. Fruit, seeds, nuts, garbage. To avoid using a bird feeder because it might, on a very slim chance, bring a snake into the yard just doesn't make sense. It's like my MIL telling me I shouldn't plant Muhly Grass because snakes love to hide in it. I have lots of Muhly grass and Fakahatchee grass, but when I see snakes, they are never 'hiding in the Muhly Grass'. This is indeed Florida and snakes are just as much a common sighting as gators, lizards and cockroaches. If the rattler was curled under her bird feeder, it likely wasn't trying to hunt because it would be more or less out in the open and easy to spot. There are reasons to kill a snake (kids, pets, high population area), but just because it is in one's yard isn't one of them. People need to stop getting so panicky about snakes and learn more about them. Even a rattler will, given the chance, leave a person alone than it will attack. I don't think there is a single snake species in the US, much less Florida, that aggressively attacks people. Rattlers do indeed hunt rodents, but rather than killing a rattler, it makes more sense to find a way to get rid of the rodents that brought it in the first place. Killing the rattler just makes it safer for the rodents to keep breeding and becoming a bigger problem (and attracting more snakes). If there's no food for the rattler, it will move on.