Thank you all. It has been quite a week at moms. Who knows, maybe they had no idea that a hen and a rooster looked different. Poor old rooster had no chance to run he was so old. Most of the neighbors have stopped by, one sad yesterday morning when he realized that the days of drinking coffee and hearing the rooster are over. We know a lot of people would hate to have a rooster nearby, but this one was old and as friendly as could be. He would call the girls for the treats the neighbors would bring them and if you crowed to him, he would reply. It was common to hear people passing and the crow call. It also makes us not feel very safe in a big section of our yard. If someone in a fit of rage would jump the fence and club the hens, what would they do to us if they were mad about their own dogs barking at us. I have been looking that the camera options and I think the easier place to run a conduit for camera cable is right down the middle of the veggie garden walk. It is fairly straight run from a room I could keep the recorder in. I just have to figure out where I could put one and not have trees blocking. Kim, I agree about moving up pot size, but with summer heat and mom watering, it is safer to just pot up to the 1g and skip the 5g over the summers. I get super busy with my real job in the summer and mom either floods or forgets to water pots. I gave them all some fish fertilizer, all are busy growing and happy, I just want a big hedge now...... I am going to look in to replacing our 4' chain link gates with something taller, even though the fence is only 4 feet tall, I will let the hedge grow to 6' and pretty sure the year + old Cl Cecile will have no trouble with a taller profile.

Ok so thats what a Sphinx moth looks like, very cool! I see thse little moth type things around here both during the day and at night, they look like a cross between a hummingbird and a bug because the wings flap real fast like hummer, and it has a beak looking thing, but it is definately not a bird, it is a bug. I thought these were sphinx moths but now that is cleared up. I have never seen a sphinx moth then. I do like the green luna moths but haven't seen one in a while, does anyone know what attracts them? BTW I also thought Kyle was older than 3! Shawn

Paul, Thanks for the lesson. I have handled all my spiders when the chance came up. You have a better chance hurting them than they have you. There fangs can't get thru the thick skin of you hands. Other parts they can, just don't give them a chance. Now I'm talking about household types, not the big tropical ones. Please don't tell me chickens are a live animal?? I thought they grew on tress like where hamburgers come from. Next you'll tell me the Easter bunny doesn't exist. Stush

Linelle - I don't eat fish (I have, but I prefer not to). I don't like to even wade in waters where they swim for fear of touching them. I have, at times, been so startled by an unexpected photo of a fish when turning the page in a magazine that I have actually thrown the magazine across the room - just an automatic response. I can't pinpoint the exact moment when this fear came on, but I was pretty small. I do remember being in a pet store when I was maybe four or five years old, and running my hand along a table full of sale items. My hand stopped on something that felt odd, and when I looked to see what it was, it was a dried-out, dead fish. Horrifying! I believe I started having fish dreams not too long after that. I'd wake up screaming in the night, certain that a fish was in the bed with me. My poor mom, being awakened at dark-thirty and having to quell the unreasonable fears of a very insistent little girl! When I was a tween, I used to like to go fishing with my grandfather when I visited my grandparents' lake house in the summer. He would bait the hook for me and take any fish I caught off the hook, and I thought it was great fun. I guess I wasn't horribly phobic at that time. One day he and I went fishing out in his boat. I caught 17 fish, and we took them home with us. My grandmother deemed them too small to fix for our dinner, so she decided to make a sort of stew out of them for the dog. She put them in a pressure cooker (I have no idea why), thinking they were all dead. Something happened and once the thing heated up, we heard hideous thrashing inside the pot. After awhile it stopped, but when she lifted the lid, there was a nasty film on top and a few eyeballs floating around. Again - horrifying stuff. The dog ate it up though. Once I told a boy in high school about my phobia, and shortly thereafter I opened my locker to find a huge dead fish inside. The boy thought that was just the funniest practical joke ever, and chased me up and down the halls holding it by the tail. I remember trying desperately to keep my cool and not show how agitated I was, but I fought not to burst into tears - or pass out. (I know this is getting to be way too long ...) A few years ago I decided that I wanted to overcome my phobia once and for all and actually sought counseling for it. I also tried to do a bit of immersion work on my own, and DH and I went to a local aquarium one afternoon. It's long been difficult for me to even get close to a fish, in any manner - even those behind glass. The salt water aquariums didn't bother me terribly; after all, those fish are often beautifully colored or comical looking. The freshwater tanks, however, caused me to panic. I forced myself to remain seated next to one that was built low to the ground with glass walls, with the various lake-living fish swimming right up to me on all sides and behind me. I couldn't do it. I sat there and just bawled and hyperventilated, and DH got me the hell out of there. Around that time we were traveling regularly to Mexico, and scuba diving was very popular where we stayed. In spite of my fish phobia, it sounded like a lot of fun, and I went so far as to take a few scuba lessons here, but did not go on to be certified. I didn't like the feeling of breathing underwater and couldn't get past a feeling of simmering panic. I know I wouldn't have made certification anyway - at least not with the instructor I had - as his group went to a local man-made lake to receive their certification, and the waters were often murky and always filled with curious fish. Pretty sure that seeing something like this would have induced dangerous panic in me! Gosh, I am sorry to have told you more than you ever wanted to know. I've not been asked about this in a long time, and I guess my memories just came flooding back!