I remembered your kitty's name, who wouldn't? rofl. So, yea, I thought Ignatz could be a real possibility. I remember old rerun cartoons on television of Ignatz the cat. They were actually produced in the era of my father's childhood so, Ignatz was around well before your time. If am not mistaken those series of cartoons were called "out of the inkwell". I am in love with Izzy, and have been since I saw the first picture of her. I used to hunt too, Michelle, and have a real respect for those canines who are able to work with humans, no matter what their job...herding or hunting, or guarding. It never fails to amaze me. My son has Labs, and one male he had a few years ago had the "softest" mouth I have ever seen on a large dog. His joy was to gather squash out of the garden and run around the house with it. When he put it down later, it was covered in spit, but the tender skin was never pierced. One does not get too excited about critters in this old house. I have found baby starlings and chimney swifts in my fireplace hearth, and once a young wild duck. Shrews, moles, mice, toads, tree frogs, black and ring necked snakes, chipmunks, salamanders, brown creepers and bats. Somewhere in my cellar lives a large black snake as well. One just has to be careful not to reach down and grab any black "hoses" or hoe handles. My son has be beat, however. A few years ago, we had two bottle fed calves, and when he weaned one of them she went looking for her bottle and got up on his back porch and through the door. He had a COW in his kitchen. Yes, I would assume a chipmunk will chew wiring and have been listening closely to my new stainless steel fridge and the freezer. Neither do I want the rodent crawling behind a wall and decomposing. I could have grabbed it once or twice when it was cornered, but I have been squirrel and chipmunk bitten several times. Nature gives cute little critters ugly, sharp, yellow teeth. Not an option.

They are such beautiful creatures (I know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder)! There was a BIG one welcoming customers in Lowe's (Vacaville) last week. :D I haven't seen any in my yard yet this year, but I had a few out there last year. Thanks for sharing! Brenda

My garden and house caters first and mostly for my dog - he's the most pampered pet you can imagine :-) This includes his own doghouse in the garage (that he hardly ever uses, but is used by the roaming cats in the neighborhood, much to Timmy's distress), an enclosed front porch with doggie door, basket, rug and private sofa, free roaming of the garden, two more beds inside the house, etc. You get the picture - he's the king of it all :-) As for wildlife, since we live on the foothills of a small mountain range and part of a natural park, we do get quite a lot of critters. We have a birdbath that is used not only by the birds but also by the bees and wasps, of which there are gazillions (we are in a honey producing area). Birds in the garden include sparrows, robins in Fall and Winter, loads of blackbirds, gold finches and a multitude of others I can't name. Last Saturday I saw my first swallow of the year. Above us on the hill we can frequently spot hawks, of which there are some colonies in the park. At night owls are a frequent visitor and we can hear their calls many times. Cuckoos are also a familiar sound as soon as Spring is here. I have a lot of evergreens in the garden and this provides excellent nesting sites for the birds. Preferred are the bay trees, laurustinus and the conifers. I'm constantly finding nests whenever I prune anything. I had a resident bat for about a year, sleeping in a closed garden umbrella we had on the patio. Unfortunately I had to remove the umbrella because the wasps decided it was a good place to nest, so it had to go. I was already stung twice, didn't want to be stung whenever I opened the umbrella! Still, bats visit frequently and it's common to see one or two flying around the garden at dusk. Some years we have glow worms in the Spring, which I absolutely love. It's magical to see them hovering around the garden at night. Other assorted critters include geckos, small lizzards, snakes, mice (yuk!), crickets, locusts and the occasional hedgehog. In terms of specifically catering for critters, I keep the birdbath going all year (we don't have hard freezes) and try to plant things I know will be used by the wildlife. This includes berry shrubs like pyracantha which are a major hit with birds in the cold Winter months. I also have a weeping mulberry tree and let its production go to the birds, who have a feast with the fruits. The compost pile is also a good feeding ground and there's a little bird that spends hours there hunting for the small fruit flies that proliferate inside the pile. Butterflies are catered for with things like lantana, mock orange and buddleia. I need to add more larval food to cater for butterflies, but haven't come quite up to it yet. I don't use any sort of chemicals in the garden, don't even spray the roses, and this of course translates into a welcome sign for critters, even if it means that slugs and snails are huge, sigh... I don't use a slingshot to get rid of them, like Edna does ;-), but I do throw them onto a neighbooring field that is kept wild. All in all, I consider a privilege to have wildlife in the garden and have been slowly educating myself to encourage it as much as possible. Eduarda

steamyb: Now I know that knowledge has been burning a hole in your pocket since the 24th. Good on you for lasting this long. But you know he will say it worked for only 90 days, say it failed, and not see it as basic normal periodic maintenance when one is creating red worm nirvana. The pods are a great and much needed idea for handling waste. I hope they succeed. Us all's hobby is proper use of waste for good, too. So I applaud hg's efforts in the field. hg seems to of been given a system designed by an expert to make work that nobody could of made work. It takes good ideas and experimenting before the system was put in place. Where is the system designer now? If I was the designer I would want to know all about this issue. Working against nature will not work as we know or keep learning again and again. These pods are such a good idea I would like to see some of our experienced worm growers go into the field to see the situation because I know they can help. If hg spent a few hours searching the archives it should / would bring a few options to hg's table. If the pods are a commercial venture then the designer should of come across this in prototype. And hired you and our many other great posters as experienced consultants because your information is worth it. I can see helping a person starting up their first bin. We do want to promote the hobby and the use of worms for composting operations of all kinds. ummmm. I think stopping the airflow is exactly what should be done. It may not have the I need to kill them all right now factor our poster is looking for. It should work fine.