Carla, I see the temps you folks have to cope with and I think of all of you. How do you do it? We don't get that hot normally, but there have been summers where we flirt with 100 degrees for a few days, and it's just miserable. Heck we haven't had that many days in the 90s this year. But even when it's in the 80s and the humidity is high, I just become a lump of inactivity. It's uncomfortable to move, but boring to not do anything. It seems like just breathing works up a sweat. Yesterday we got some great relief -- lots of rain in the morning, overcast day, and the temps didn't crack 70. It felt great. This morning is sunny, dry (low humidity), and we'll max out at a dry 82 today. Finally -- tolerable weather. It was such great sleeping weather (50s) that I didn't get up until after 8:00 this morning. I'd send that to you, honey, if there was a way to do so. I'm with Patrick; I'd chase after spring and/or autumn around the globe if there was a way to do it. Hang in there! Deb

Hope those who live where winter is usually mild stay warm. I remember it snowed one year when we lived in southern Germany. I don't think some people had seen that too often, or maybe not at all, and were out driving their cars with smooth tires and pulling their kids on sleighs behind! Cars were slipping all over! Not a very safe practice and I hoped no one got hurt but they were having the time of their lives! We had the really cold front but now it's 'balmier' - going up to 0C (32F) for tomorrow's high but down to -8C (17F) at night. I don't really notice how cold it is unless the wood stove doesn't keep up and the furnace kicks in. Always comfy indoors, enough food supplies for probably a good week, a nice neighbor plows our private road and our long driveway, and with 4 wheel drive and good winter tires I'm prepared. Tolerate having to wear boots for months which is difficult for me as I prefer bare feet! At least I can have bare feet in the house. Last night when we drove home from the city and it was just starting to snow again there were 3 big trucks with snow blades and sand/salt loads waiting til the snow got deeper before they headed out. Most people are ready for it so it's not so bad. LL my roses are wearing their fencing rings filled with peat moss and a layer of snow. I'll pile more snow on them over the winter. I'm hoping for more snow than we had last year as the ground was almost bare in January and I was putting leaves I'd saved for compost on some plants. Hope the roses make it but if not I'll have to get even hardier ones cause I'm not doing more to protect them.

When we first moved here, I wanted to "save" every bird and critter that needed help, and quickly learned no one else around here was as worried about the wild things as I was. Our first year, a big owl crashed THROUGH the fiberglass skylite panel on the roof of the chicken coop. He cut his head and hurt a wing. I called all over southern Oklahoma and no one (least of all the local Fish and Wildlife people) were interested in helping that owl. I was crushed. Finally, we moved him to an adjacent small guinea coop/pen and put the guineas in with the chickens. We left the door open, and he finally flew away on his own after several days. I refused to catch mice for him, so he had to live on canned cat food for those few days. I guess if you live in an area where wildlife is very abundant, people don't get as excited about one injured bird. If blue jays are engangered, you can't tell it here! We probably are overpopulated with birds, though, because we put out food for them and have a constant water source. I HAVE noticed that there are more birds than usual hanging out around the garden and eating bugs in the garden. Birds are a terrific method of pest control, so I encourage them in every way possible. We ALWAYS have a pair of owls who stay together all the time and hunt together. One is a really big barn owl, and we call him Hooty. The other is a little screech owl, obviously named Screechy. You never see one without the other, which is fascinating. They've been here as long as we have. I don't know if the current Hooty and Screechy pair are the actual same Hooty and Screechy pair that we first saw in 1999. I think it is an odd pairing. I feel sorry for them....the crows harass them relentlessly and try to run them off. Our owls are mostly out at night, but every now and then I see them out late in the morning. For all the birds we have coming to the feeders, predator birds do not come into the yard much. Maybe the cats and dogs help keep them away? Oh, and the Purple Martins also like to chase off other birds attempting to "hunt" in their territory too. Dawn

John_Blakeman: With all due respect to your "take" on the post I made, let me assure you that I observed a pair of Snowy Owls nesting. I have observed owls for many years, and I have not the least problem distinguishing a foot-tall Barn Owl from a two-foot-tall (plus) Snowy Owl, as far as size alone is concerned. The weight, from memory, is about a pound for the Barn Owl, compared to about 4 pounds, for the Snowy Owl. This, regarding size and weight, alone. The appearance is totally different, also--I could NEVER confuse the two, particularly when we observed these owls flying quite low (the water tower was 20'-25' high, as was the open door to the barn loft--and that's as high as the owls flew, from point A to point B). I spent most of my summer vacation from school watching the Snowy Owls, daily, as did my aunt, uncle, and two cousins. Of course we had the intelligence to consult a bird book immediately, as none had ever seen such huge, white owls. The identification was simple--pictures of Snowy Owls were carbon copies of the owls flying from the water tower to the open barn loft. I have surmised in later years, that the owls wintered in the area, and found such an abundance of mice and rats in the barn, that a pair stayed over and nested--it's basically that simple, and it definitely occurred. My uncle used to go down to this barn at night, over the years, with a flashlight in one hand, and "Kitty" (a black-and-white farm cat, and a great rat and mouse killer) in the other--and me, when I was young, tagging along. He would shine his light in the rafters, and rats and mice--sometimes twenty to twenty five visible at a time--would take off running the rafters. He would throw Kitty up onto a rafter, and the cat would chase the rats and mice, killing them and dropping them below, as it chased others. It was unbelievable to me, as a child--first, the sheer NUMBERS of vermin present, and, second, the NUMBER the cat would kill before they could all get through the holes they had made in the barn siding. It was not unusual for her to kill 6 or 8 rats/mice, after being thrown into the rafters, and before they could escape. So much for the number of prey animals that the barn contained. To answer some of the other points you bring up in your post: You mention "woods" and "wooded area" at least 3 times Where did you get the idea that any "woods" were present? Please reread my post. The water tower couldn't have been in a more open area. To describe it further: Our farmhouse sat in a large open yard of about two acres; then, there was a fence to an open pasture. In this open pasture, no more than 100 yards from the house, was the water tower. It was 100 yards or less to the barn, where the Snowy Owls caught rats and mice--in the same open field as the water tower. There were no woods for half a mile in any direction, and the pasture was grazed by cattle year-round. This was really the only place a Snowy Owl COULD have nested, to keep from being trampled by cattle. Like a raised hump or mound in the tundra of the Arctic. You mention Snowy Owls prefer open skyview. They certainly had it here--the water tower was UNCOVERED--like a large, OPEN, barrel, used to catch rainwater (possibly over a hundred years old, as the house was built in 1852). You mention Snowy Owls can't provide enough food for 5 chicks. Are you aware that the average number of eggs laid by a Snowy Owl is 3 to 9--depending on the food supply? (Another source says 5 to 8. Do a search for Snowy Owl if you're in doubt). Are you aware, also, that Snowy Owls are diurnal, and that Barn Owls are the MOST nocturnal of the North American owls? Also, that Snowy Owl chicks are "downy white", just as I described them? That Snowy Owls have been observed nesting in abandoned Eagles' nests? That they have been observed in Georgia, the Gulf states, and as far south as the Carribean? My post stands totally correct, except for one conclusion that I should not have drawn. I mention that the handful of sticks I observed on the floor of the water tower was "placed there by the owls". Of course, I have no way of knowing whether they placed these sticks there, or whether they remained from some previous nesting. They were definitely no organized nest--but loose sticks spread about in the center of the tower floor. I was expecting to see a "nest" in the tower, and remember the site being conspicuous for its lack of one. RichardZone7Maryland: Prior to my observation of a pair of Snowy Owls in the woods in Virginia in 1991, I previously saw a lone Snowy Owl in the Winter of 1980, in a tree in the median of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, as I traveled northbound to BWI. There was some snow on the ground, and he sat motionless, looking down, for prey. Others: To reiterate, has anyone observed Snowy Owls nesting in states other than Alaska?