Mike, Invasive isn't on your property. I think you have the words invasive and aggressive mixed up. Something that might be aggressive would re-seed on your own property. When the seeds are blown or deposited by animals elsewhere, and those plants then overtake our native flora, they have escaped from cultivation. It would then be considered an invasive plant, ie burning bush and butterfly bush. I know a woman in IL who has barberry and burning bush in her woods. They came from the neighbors property. They sure weren't planted there. I had a barberry show up on the side of our house. I never planted a barberry. But up the road, yes, up the road, they have 3 plants. If the plant is on your states invasive list, it's the responsible thing to do and not plant it. Just because a nursery can sell the darn things a dime a dozen, doesn't mean the nursery is doing a good thing. In fact, the green industry is always sent a list of things that are considered invasive for your state. If said nursery sells the plant, they are selling some unsuspecting person an invasive plant. They aren't a good nursery if they willing and knowingly sell a plant that is on your states invasive/noxious weed list. You also don't say what kind of ivy. Poison Ivy? Boston Ivy? English Ivy? Here's one of many definitions of invasive. # invasive An introduced (non-native) plant that disrupts the local ecosystem and isn't checked by climate, grazing, or other natural means. Extreme examples include kudzu vine (Pueraria lobata), which can grow 35 feet in one season and which the American Horticultural Society's A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants calls "the vine that ate the South". The following link is to your states list of invasive plants. I would also suggest you copy and paste the link Lori gave and read it. Quoted from the below link also says; This list of invasive species is not meant to be definitive, but rather a guideline to some of the most troublesome species that degrade native plant communities in Pennsylvania. These species were chosen from a more extensive list compiled from adjacent state or regional lists of invasive plant species. Input was sought from experienced individuals familiar with Pennsylvania's flora from a field perspective. For a more extensive list of invasive species, please contact DCNR, Bureau of Forestry, P.O. Box 8552, Harrisburg, PA 17105-8552 Here is a link that might be useful: invasive plants in PA

Hey, on 5/20/07 i was in my backyard enjoying the sun and i noticed that a hawk was circling over the backyard. I have an Italian Greyhound and he was strolling about so i thouht the hawk may have been looking at him. I kind of got nervous so i rushed over to him to try to catch him but he was having to much fun to come inside so he starts speeding around the yard playfully. As i'm trying to catch him i notice a still bird sitting in the open grass I study it for awhile and it hasn't blinked or moved at all, i gently touch its beak with the tip of my shoe to see if alive or dead because i often find dead birds but this one wasn't shredded. Once i touch its beak it opens and i relize the hawk was stalking the bird! I dig up a few worms clean them then let them soak in a little Gatorade for a minute and feed them to the bird. I look to see if the hawk is still around and it has perched itself on the neighboor's roof. The little bird being replenished starts to hop around so i think to myself it must be a fledgling. I let it hop around without any interaction and the parents start to react nerviously, thats when i discover it was a baby robin. As it hops closer to the neighboors fence i soon put together the pieces and the parents are panicking becuase the hawk is over there so i walk as calmly and fast as i can but i startle it and it goes under the large wood fence as the parent robins start to scream and squawk. I run to get a garbage can, a net, the stick part of a broken shovel, and duck tape. I now have a very long net and something to stand on to see over the fence. I swoop it in the net just in time and the hawk takes of from the closer part of the roof frustrated. Sure the parents are mad at me now but i couldn't just leave it there for the hawk to get it later. So i took it inside. That afternoon i put it in a Nike shoe box and went back to my other house in NYC. The next day i brought it to school to ask my math teacher what i should do because she has helped injured birds before, she upgraded its box to an office paper box. She recommened Exact hand feeding formula for baby birds and an eye dropper. A couple of days i bought a small hamster cage that fitted the robin well and then later i set out to find some worms. It is very hard to find wild worms in NYC but i did. As the bird got a little fatter we cleaned up the cage and switched it for a real bird cage. I let it out in my room whenever i'm not at school. It is happy as can be. I am currently trying to teach it how to eat on its own by gently pushing its beak into various fruits - I research what it should and shouldn't have. Tomorrow will make it a month that its been living with me. I do plan to give it the option of leaving, but thats after i teach it to eat without my assistance. It will peck and eat small insects that it finds on the patio in NJ. Well thats my story in great detail, hope i have some interesting comments to view in a few days. BTW it taught itself to walk in a hamster wheel which i took a short video of. (NOTE: It is no longer in the hamster cage) I'll post the link for anyone that would like to see. LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRflDdmRu0c

I have a doubly literary one for you: My brother named his cockatiel Quasimodo - Quasi for short - after a pigeon of the same name in Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. That pigeon in turn had been named after the bell-ringer from Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, because it was so ugly when he got it. It was moulting from its baby down and had pin feathers sticking in every direction, just like Quasi when brother got him. My own tiel has a sort of literary name as well: Ljúflingur, which is a metaphor used in poetry to refer to an elf or a lover. It literally means "sweet one".

Well growing up on a farm in deep South Louisiana I have seen more armadillos than I ever wanted to. They are a horrible pest especially on the farm. They can destroy crops and are not easy to kill. Shooting them is dangerous because bullets and pieces of the armadillos hard shell can ricochet back and hit you. My dad was trying to kill one especially nasty critter under the house. Our house was slightly elevated so you could get under there. Our dog Poopie (I didn't name him!) ran after the armadillo right as daddy shot the armadillo a piece of the hard shell ripped off the critter and flew into Poopie's eye and put it out. The vet cleaned it up and he was fine. You would never know he was missing an eye. I have never eaten it but they do say it's a very pretty white meat similar to pork loin.