YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! I spotted my first snake today!! After all these years I finally spotted a black racer just after sunset. I got up close to be sure what kind it was and he stopped dead in his tracks. Remember they are just as scared of us as we are of them. As long as you leave them be they wont bother you. Now I am sure many will disagree but that is rather true. Most cases of snake bites involve some sort of disturbance to them. Though the disturbance may have been unintensional. I mean how did you know there was a snake under that overturned canoe next to the pond. As a child I found myself in an emergency room shortly after turning over a canoe. No not a snake bite, I was raised around snakes it was routine for me to use a large stick to turn over the canoe. Well that day the stick I was using snapped and went into my leg from the downward force of the canoe. A common phrase: "well I just stepped over the brush pile and he struck". Well you startled him when you came across. So, Yeah I get it. But if you see one in plain view and just avoid going near it then you will be OK. Now I know that may not hold true for all species but for most that is true. So why should all snakes be killed just because they are a snake? I ask that because thats what I hear from a LOT of people! "well any snake is a dead snake in my yard" a phrase that makes me cringe. A friend of mine many years ago brought a snake he had killed bragging about the copperhead. When I told him he had killed a corn snake he just couldn't believe it. I had to get a book out to show him. I never understood how the copperhead got that name when the corn snake has a lot more copper color than the copperhead. I don't know, does "copper" refer to something other than color? I suppose it has the darker color of tarnished copper sometimes but not usually on the head. Those darker colors are usually more mid body. Well I will have to keep quite about the snake. I don't want my neighbors to know they would probably freak.

Oh, man. I wish I had snakes. Occasionally I see a black snake and get all happy. I have so many moles and voles that they've pushed up my flagstones and walking on the yard is an exercise in ankle strain. I admit to using Grub-X, but while the grass (non-mole spots) are looking like grass, evidently the moles and voles have something else to live on. I have a good snake story, though. I have this one area where even though I stomp on the mole trails, they redig them into a raised bed. I keep moving plants away from their trail, but inevitably they end up under this one heuchera. One day, I was standing in the yard talking on the phone. I saw something dark move near the heuchera, and couldn't figure it out. I thought it might be a hurt mouse or something. I don't know why I didn't think mole. Anyway, upon closer inspection, it was a snake backing into the mole trail away from me. He'd found a little smorgasboard. Unfortunately, he must have gotten full and left, because the moles are more than ever. But it was so cool to find this snake doing his think in the garden! I like snakes. Not big on spiders, but I like snakes. C.

Mosquitoes are a problem sporadically for us, but since we tend not to have the heavier rainfall many of you have been having, they're not much of a problem right now. We do have a huge platoon of dragonflies and damselflies who look for food relentlessly all day long and they love mosquitoes, and we have lots of birds (including Purple Martins) and bats that eat them too. I also put Bt 'israelensis' granules or dunks in all our standing bodies of water...like the rain barrels, the ponds, etc. Suzie, It can be very hard to identify caterpillars since there are over 300,000 species of Lepidoptera worldwide but Susan might be able to tell you what it is since she is into butterfly gardening. On the website linked below, there are additional links that identify known butterflies and moths of Oklahoma. If the damage to your shrubs rises to the level that you feel like you need to treat the caterpillar infestation, you can spray your shrubs with Bt 'Kurstaki' which is a toxin manufactured from a bacteria that specifically targets caterpillars. It is organic and won't harm anything other than the butterfly/moth larvae. It is easily found in stores and the products that have it as their active ingredient include Thuricide, Dipel and Safer Caterpiller Killer. In the veggie garden, I generally just handpick cats off plants because I have so many flowers there that attract butterflies and moths, and even desirable caterpillars like those of the Black Swallowtail, so I don't like to use Bt there. In an ornamental shrub bed, though, I wouldn't hesitate to spray with Bt if the shrubs had considerable damage. Anna, I'm in Love County and have not seen any decrease in fire ants this year (I wish I had), so I don't think the winter affected ours even though our low temps this winter went down into the single digits a few times. We had them all over the place beginning about late March and running through mid-May. Since the rain stopped in our county and the heat cranked up into the mid- to upper-90s, they've gone underground the last 2 or 3 weeks and I'm not seeing them as much, but I bet if it rained they'd pop up out of the ground overnight. I still find them in raised beds in the veggie garden when I'm digging or when I'm pulling weeds, and I still run over an occasional mound when mowing. I only treat mounds in the veggie garden and in my container-grown vegetables, the dog's fenced play yard, and the backyard where our granddaughter plays and I only use organic fire ant killers. We have almost 15 acres, so there's no way we could afford to treat all of it. In the past I have used some non-organic fire ant killers, but because we have a lot of edible crops in the form not only of vegetables but also fruit trees and berry crops, I've stopped using all nonorganic fire ant killers. We have oodles of native ants of all kinds, but the evil fire ants dominate the ant world at our place. We also have red harvester ants in and around the veggie garden, but I leave them alone because they are a food source for the horned toads and because they clean up the carcasses of dead insects. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Butterflies and Moths of Oklahoma

Great stuff Gary! It is neat to be able to check the same terrain repeatedly over time and see what snakes are abundant and what rare surprises are in store.