Love the view and nice open lawn, and can understand why you would want to screen the neighbors out when they are that close. Perhaps some bushes that grow 10-15 feet high near the road/property line would give needed screening of the neighbors without damaging the view or breaking up the property. With the slope, you could plant low growing bushes closer to the house, possibly creating a small front lawn followed by the larger lawn, and still block the view of the neighbors, or plant larger growing bushes as you move further away from the house.

wow, this is an old thread! So much has changed in the last couple years.....some good, mostly bad. There are now several different strains of KHV, meaning the virus is mutating. It is just as deadly as ever. Heat cycling a fish to force the virus to show it's self has been found to be of little benefit. Putting a niave fish from your own collection while the new fish is in QT is also of little benefit (at least for the purpose of KHV detection). The only way to know for sure is to have new fish blood tested, which is usually done by the dealer since drawing blood is outside the ability of most hobbiests. A KHV survivor can live with the virus for a long time and not show any ill effects for a long time. How long? Unknown at this time. But like the chicken pox virus in humans comes back as shingles in adults, the KHV virus can live in a koi or goldfish for a long time and then the fish can start to shed the virus again, killing other pond inhabitants. So my advise? 1. Only buy fish from trusted sources. 2. Only buy from dealers who test the fish for the active virus, and also the antibodies. 3. destroy ALL fish that have been exposed to KHV or assume the risk that these fish can infect others later down the road. Pretty scary stuff. Be careful.

My 2005 lifelisters: Eastern Coachwhip Snake (Black Phase) Central Plains Milk Snake Intergrade Red/Central Plains Milk Intergrade Speckled/Desert Kingsnake Western Plains Garter Snake Sonoran Mountain Whipsnake Sonoran Gopher Snake Mojave Rattlesnake Great Plains Skink Western Slender Glass Lizard Mountain Short Horned Lizard Zebra-tailed Lizard Sonoran Spotted Whiptail Madrean Alligator Lizard Desert Box Turtle Great Plains Narrowmouth Toad Sonoran Toad Mexican Spadefoot Toad Some of my favorite herping moments of the year (in chronological order): 1. The startling discovery of a 5 1/2 foot long Eastern Coachwhip Snake (while showing Eitan Grunwald around) under a rock when my eyes and brain were adjusted to ringneck snakes and earth snakes. 2. Finding 4 adult Timber Rattlesnakes and a Racer under a corner of tin. That piece of tin had 8 snakes total under it and the tin pile produced an additional timber and a speckled/desert kingsnake as well. 3. Finding pairs of Central Plains Milksnakes with Chad as our guide. 4. Wading at night among the cottonmouths with herpfriend. 5. Finding my lifelist mojave rattlesnake. 6. Getting tagged five times by a gorgeous Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake. It's been an enjoyable year and fall migration in Missouri and Southern Illinois is still to come..

I'm a college student majoring in dental hygiene and I just finished a course called microbiology. Basically the study of organisms only visible by microscopes. One thing we studied was the herpes virus. Like a few people have posted before me there is herpes simplex 1 and herpes simplex 2. My professor and textbook stated that herpes simplex 1 infects basically from the waist and up while herpes simplex 2 infects the genital area. On rare occasions they can both infect other areas but the outbreaks are milder because the virus is not where it naturally thrives. Both are highly contagious but they're actually the most contagious right before the visible outbreak of blisters occur. I still wouldn't advise popping the blister because of scarring though. If you happen to accidently pop it, immediately use soap and water to wash off the infected area so that you prevent the spread of the infection .