Cheryl, I would love to trade those for what I have. A huge Great Blue Heron...that only 2 days ago ate my prize Koi....may he rest in peace...my Snowflake. :( I should re-phrase, he didn't eat him, because the fish was too big. He was about 2 feet long or more. So he just kept stabbing him with his long pointy beak until he must have gotten tired of trying. I arrived home to clean up the pieces. This is now a personal vendetta with this particular bird. I have been chasing him away for over 2 weeks. I installed the string around the pond thing which is suppose to keep them away. I have a "scare crow" up. Nothing scares it. I have gotten about 10 feet away from it yelling and it just stood in the pond...it finally flew away when I beaned it with a stone. That was before the murder scene a couple of days ago. It keeps trying to eat all the little babies and I must say it looks as though it has been kind of successful at it. So I would love your guinea fowl...maybe they can scare the beegeezus out of that demon bird. Thank you all for allowing me to vent...I must admit...I feel a little better :) vina

NOTE: If the bumper on your truck is stock, supplied and installed at the factory, you will probably end up with a non-bumper condition! Most rear bumpers on pickups are held on by 4 little chrome headed bolts, or by flimsy brackets with little bolts. It is for this condition that they sell trailer draw-bars that bolt to the frame rails, and should be used for any towing. One fellow, while driving down the interstate, saw a boat just like his, passing him up, and setting on a boat trailer, just like his----was his! the bumper had broken off, but was still attached to the trailer hitch. Yes, you could drag a RR tie behind it, but, do you know how heavy a RR tie is? MMMM.

"Big looking brute" --------------------- yeah it is rather substantial for lawn mowing ... But I didnt buy it solely for lawn mowing purposes... I will say the guy had quiet a few of these things stashed away and if I had the choice I might have gotten the 22x model instead. Mostly because I felt I didnt really need to climb up onto a big @ss brute GT (just a brute GT would have sufficed) . For the first couple of days afterward - I felt a little bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger driving around on the Humvee of garden tractors. I think that the 22x probably would have done me nicely. However the size of the machine wouldnt have changed, just the height - So I went forward with the purchase on the 444. They sure are a rugged machine - this morning I was out there and started it up to move it. Letting it warm up a bit - I was amazed at that cast iron Kohler motor and how it idles so lowww - you can almost count the revolutions as it fires. (they dont make em like that anymore). "GT engineering for granted" ------------------------------- I do believe that as well... I dont think the engineers are designing tractors so much as they are designing something with a predetermined life time... Instead of selling quality product, parts and services - they sell junk that needs to be replaced every few years. Its almost as if these guys should be taken to a tractor junkyard and shown what heavy duty really looks like, as opposed to making Sears tractors with plastic bumpers (to add automotive styling). Its a shame we (USA) cant build cars of this quality. Id be willing to pay a bit more for a truck that didnt have to have its tranny changed out 3 times over the course of a 119k miles. (and it didnt even get worked hard ). Let us prey that the bankruptcy procedures remove the chaff from the wheat within GM and Chrysler. Dave

After wanting my own home for many years while married and after my divorce, I bought a small house with a big blank canvas landscape so I could garden my heart out. It was close to a college for my son and the price was in my range. This was 2006 when home prices were sky high so I felt lucky to be able to find a house close to my job. There was a car repair shop next store and I wasn't fond of that but everything else fit my needs. I do a lot of gardening in a cottage style and fixed the place up as best I could with a limited budget. But I've replaced the roof, the front porch, the oil tank and had some electrical work done.The house next door is owned by a couple that have done no maintenance whatsoever. Its a cedar shingle house that has peeling trim paint broken gutters and over the years - outdoor cats who are in my yard more than their own. They poop in my garden and my indoor cat got fleas last summer. Now I have to treat him every month. When he mows the lawn which isn't frequent and has more weeds than grass, he will leave tall tufts near his steps because he can't get his mower close by. The driveway is dirt and the back deck which houses a variety of junk is greyed and rotting is visible from my side. Not to mention that because I don't like being unneighborly and felt bad because they are limited people through no fault of their own, I would talk to them when they would see me outside. It got to a point where every time I was outside in my garden which is every day in summer, he would come over to chew my ear off. I never had peace. I would sneak outside through the back door and work on the back yard so they wouldn't see me. The wife, my son believes, is autistic because she talks about subjects in a loop style. Suddenly one day the neighbor and his car disappeared for several days. It turns out he was arrested for following two young girls in different parts of town! I started doing some research on him and he's been arrested several times for drinking and driving and alcohol related violations! Needless to say, I avoid him like the plague now. I got my hopes up when they foreclosed on their home and were attempting a short sale. But the bank couldn't sell it because the house is in such disrepair. They managed to refinance somehow....and are now staying.