Last night I had a interesting thing happen to me. I had just done my first Angelic connection with meditation, candles and certain harmonic rituals when I came upstairs and was relaxing. My husband was asleep upstairs . All of the sudden, what was to me a bird came flying past my head. It was small, 4 inches or so. It flew over me a few more times and then realized that it was a bat! I got my phone and started videotaping my cat going after . was encouraging my cat to kill .. inbetween my cats food and water dishes for several minutes as my cat looked puzzled. All of the sudden it just took off!!! It flew straight up in the air. Into the kitchen ( filming and screaming!). It landed on window sill, tucked it's wings (hung out). Then proceeded around. Finally landing on the kitchen mat by the back door. Paying (again). MY cat Boots was stumped this behavior left the room. started feeling like there was more to this than meets the eye. went and googled "a bat in your house" and to my surprise ***Bats Symbols of transition, initiation and the start of a new beginning. They Symbolize Death and rebirth. Death in the sense of letting go of the old and bringing in the new! In the Chinese culture bats are Symbols of Good luck. Chinese word for bat is " pronounced the same as the word for "Good Fortune" Upon reading all of this just horrible. I had covered the bat with and put a heavy stone pizza plate over the bowl so that the bat could not escape. Now I put my cat, got my phone/camera ready and uncovered the plate and bowl. He was just laying there. Lifeless. wwent to find a proper box so that I could give him a proper burial in the morning, got latex gloves on and went to move him he lifted his head!!! I jumped back !! So now I knew that once again, he wasn't ! turned off all of the lights in the house and got within a few inches of his face and just talked to him for a bit. I told him that I hoped that he would be alright and that had I known of the Symbolism, that I would have been appreciative of his presence. He truly looked sweet and cute. He had cute little itty bitty hands and without wings was only an inch wide and not much longer. He was furry like a teddy bear. left a note for my husband asking him NOT kill the bat and not to let our cat in. When he got up to around 4 bat had moved a different part of the kitchen /, and my husband picked him up and placed him on our shelf on our bbq an hour or so later when the paper came the bat was gone. Okay, so there you have it! My experience was of a Spiritual one * in my opinion * we live on the Ocean Washington State. Have a newer home with no attic, have 2 fireplaces that have closed glass doors and have never seen a bat! My conclusion is that there are good forces out there and that I got visited by one .

I'm sorry that the link I provided doesn't take credit cards - I suggest Googling for the item and finding another vendor that does if you don't have a Paypal account. May I offer another perspective on the Lyme Disease crisis? I know that many people really feel that a diagnosis of Lyme is a devastating, life-altering, health issue. I don't know them so I can't dispute their beliefs or health status, but I can state that I have had Lyme and been treated for it (twice) with a course of oral doxycycline, both times successfully and I do not have any long-term issues. My poor DH had neurological Lyme (positive spinal tap and Bell's palsy) and he was also successfully treated without long-term consequences, though in his case it required a PIC line and 30 days of very expensive IV antibiotics. In my rural, farming neighborhood, nearly everybody has had Lyme, at least once. We live in the upper Hudson Valley in a Lyme "hotspot". I find feeding ticks on me at least dozen or more times each year, despite fairly rigorous anti-tick behavioral precautions. (I use no sprays or insecticides on either myself or clothing.) I do keep doxy on hand to take prophylactically (single 200 mg dose) if I find a tick I don't know, for certain, has only been on me for a few hours. (That strategy has always worked well until the advent of Anaplasmosis which can be transmitted much earlier on. It is unknown how much time is needed for Anaplasmosis, unlike Lyme which needs a bite of 18-24 hours duration. In the case of the bite where I got Anaplasmosis, the tick could only have been on me less than 6 hours, and probably only biting me a good deal fewer hours.) If you live in a tick area you might consider discussing post-bite prevention antibiotics with your MD. (And as a side note unlike some drugs which can lose potency over time, doxy both loses potency and becomes toxic. So, please, don't use old doxycycline, ever.) Since I expect to encounter ticks, daily, I only rarely discover a tick that could possibly have been on me more than a few hours. (Example 21 bites last year, but only a single instance when I didn't know for sure that there was no way it could have been on more than 6 hours. And even though I took the preventive doxy for it, it was not a matter of having missed one after being out, just a failure to do a tick check prior to going out for the day.) Which brings me to my most important strategy suggestion: If you live in a tick area, or plan to go to one: do a thorough tick check BEFORE (or daily in the am in my case where I live in tick-hell) you go out. This gives you a tick-free starting point to age any subsequent bite. I also change out of my outdoor clothes after being in the woods or gardening as soon as I come inside. I never sit on the couch, or a bed, or on a rug in tick-exposed clothes - in fact I won't even sit down, except in the bathroom, in tick-exposed clothes. I wear tall boots (Wellies) for much of the year. I have separate outdoor coats for going out into tick areas and going to the grocery store. I routinely tuck all my layers in carefully: undervest into panties, turtleneck (with cuffs!) into pants, shirt into trousers, etc. I find only very thick socks will stop tiny nymph ticks, so I don't bother much tucking pant legs into socks. Working in my woodlot, I wear Carhardt bib overalls with slightly over-long legs that slop over my shoes. I never, ever, wear shorts, or sandals, or a skirt in a tick area unless I am prepared to be there for only a few minutes and then go in and strip down for a full tick check. My late Mother who was an ornithologist (wildlife biologist who specializes in birds), made for herself one-piece, zip-front overalls because she worked in very tick-infested areas of the world (with a whole different set of virulent tick-borne diseases.) I've been thinking of digging out her patterns and seeing if I can make myself some lightweight ones for summer this year as I anticipate being even more exposed than usual. I had to give up one of my most-cherished daily activities: walking out in the early morning with my cup of OJ to see what had come up overnight in my garden because I usually did this in my long nightgown. Ticks just adore hopping on to flannel and then hiding in the seams only to come crawling out the next night in my bed! Notwithstanding my fairly elaborate anti-tick strategies, I want to point out that a tick bite, even a diagnosis of Lyme disease, is not necessarily an enormous health crisis. True, some people seem to find themselves engaged in protracted issues, but most people do not. There is a substantial, and thriving, cottage industry promoting long-term Lyme disease problems. Ordinary, straight forward, evidence-based, medical care in most cases is more than sufficient. Don't assume that just because you've heard of Lyme horror stories that long-term problems will inevitably happen to you. And in the case of Anaplasmosis, what I am recovering from just now, there is NO known case of long-term, or chronic, infections. In researching it after I got out of the hospital, I found many of the so-called "Lyme-Aware" websites lumping all tick-borne diseases into the chronic-crisis viewpoint. But deep research into the medical literature at a medical library refutes this. One person who I encountered recently in my effort to get the word out about the presence of Anaplasmosis (someone really promoting the whole chronic-Lyme thing) told me that my high post-disease Anaplasmosis antibody level was "proof" of the disease remained lurking, insufficiently treated, in my body. Um, no, the antibodies show my own system's response to the infection and its state of being able, now, to better defend against it in the future. This is how vaccines work! I suggest taking a good deal of the chronic Lyme online information with a healthy dose of skepticism. Your own primary care doc can take care of you quite well in the case of Lyme. You don't necessarily need to be treated by a so-called Lyme-Literate physician. Do daily tick checks (at least 2X day); decide on some family strategies for minimizing the risk of bringing ticks in on clothing to drop off in the house; consider getting a script for prophylactic doxycycline for tick bites of unknown length; put Frontline on your pets if they go out; get any tick off completely and promptly and without squashing it while doing so; clean the bite with hydrogen peroxide or Betadine; lay in a supply of Benadryl topical cream if you, like me, get very itchy on the third day after a bite; take the 14 or more likely, 30-day, course of treatment if you develop any a tick-borne illness and don't make yourself too crazy over the highly-promoted, but remote, potential of long-term illness. It's not inevitable, nor even, likely. Please note: I am not saying that some people don't develop long-term illness from tick-bites, just pointing out that there is considerable hype, and a lot of misinformation, out there related to Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses. I urge you to keep in mind that most people do not have any serious problems. And I really don't want to dispute Alisande, someone who I respect a great deal. But I don't agree that the treatment protocols are confused. In the case of Lyme and Anaplasmosis, (the only two I have personal experience with)they are pretty straight forward. When my husband was diagnosed with neurological Lyme (a stage worse than "simple" Lyme), I checked out various so-called Lyme-Literate medical practices. Some were so obviously doing "wallet-biopsies" on prospective patients that my alarm bells went off. As Alisande says most won't take conventional insurance or Medicare, require significant up-front cash payments and there's substantial uncertainty whether their treatments are any more effective than standard care. We opted for standard care and even at that advanced stage, it was a complete cure for him. What is very effective against the risk of of all tick-borne diseases is: personal vigilance (daily, careful tick checks); prophylaxis of some bites; and recognition and prompt treatment of any illness. In the case of three of the four possible tick-borne diseases in the NE (Lyme, Anaplasmosis, Erlichiosis and Babeseosis) doxycyline treatments of varying lengths are the cure for the early-stage disease. Only Babesiosis requires different antibiotic regimen. HTH, L.

Bon, Aren't they awful this year? And whatever species is around down here right now is huge. I mean, they aren't big like craneflies, but they are a lot bigger than the average mosquito. I understand that Dallas County, TX, where Tim and Chris work of course, already has confirmed 3 cases of West Nile Virus in mosquitoes trapped and tested as a means of early disease detection. They often detect the virus in trapped mosquitoes long before any human cases occur, but it still bothers me that they are detecting it so early there. That means it is only 80 miles SE of our county, if not closer. Nancy, I hope your luck with the mosquitoes holds. The population here seems to explode when we start hitting temperatures in the 80s and have had recent or fairly recent rainfall. Some years it surprises me how slow they are to show up, but we had them all winter long without ceasing, so I'm not surprised the population is high now. They may spray around the lake, but that only does so much good. At some point, they cannot spray enough to get them all, so enjoy it for however long it lasts! Yes, we have had both dogs and cats bitten by venomous snakes. Most survived. I am glad your dog did survive it. Only a couple of our pets were sick enough to require a trip to the vet. Cats are less likely to survive than large dogs. We have one cat, Shady, who was bitten by a copperhead about 12 or 13 years ago. He developed the copper-colored rash and the whole nine yards, and still has a scar where the rash appeared. Another cat, Ranger, was bitten in the face and partially paralyzed. We took her to the vet and ran up big bills to save her, and it was worth every nickle. Even after the vet finally took her off the IV and let her come home after about a week of his skilled intensive care, her eyes were paralyzed open for weeks, and he still wasn't sure if the paralysis would heal, though he thought it would. She slept by creeping into a dark corner of the closet and burying her head in the darkest spot she could find. She's fully back to normal now. Honestly, I did not expect her to survive. Our now-deceased cat, Spots, was bitten twice, several years apart. The vet was surprised she survived the first time and said a second venomous bite likely would kill her. It didn't. She died about a decade later of old-age related issues. Our Rottweiler-Terrier mix, Duke, who passed away last year at the age of 12, took a direct hit to the face from a timber rattler around 2008 and should not have survived that. Tim was at a wreck on the interstate and I sent him a frantic text message because it was a Sunday evening and I knew a vet wasn't a viable option. Duke started going into shock, so I sat on the ground and held him upright. Tim said if I let him go down on the ground, we'd likely lose him. As soon as Tim got home, he broke out the Benadryl tablets, crushed up a couple, dissolved them in water and forced them down Duke's throat with a syringe. By then, Duke was panting heavily and was glassy-eyed. Within maybe 30 minutes of receiving the Benadryl, the swelling in his face went down and he seemed fine, and I was finally able to let go of him after having held him upright (he weighed 110 lbs.) for about 90 minutes. Ever since then, we have kept a bottle of the Children's Benadryl in the medicine cabinet in case a dog needs it again. With Duke, the snake struck him on the side of his snout, near his nose, which is a fairly bony area, which may have saved Duke's life, as it may have kept some of the venom from making it into his bloodstream. People tend to have a very strong reaction to a bite from a timber rattler, so I didn't have high hopes when I saw that snake scurrying away from Duke and knew that was what had just bitten him. A lot of people think they'll just take the pet to the vet and he or she will give it antivenin and all will be well, which isn't really likely. Using antivenin is cost-prohibitive, and not even guaranteed to work. Sometimes, a reaction to it can be worse than the original snakebite, and you never know how someone, animal or human, will react to the antivenin. We have lost two cats to snakebites, both in our very early years here. Except for my garden and the chicken coop areas, we don't have as many snakes around the house as we used to, and we haven't had a cat or dog bitten by a snake now in several years. I hope our luck holds. In Duke's case, he was bitten near our front driveway gate. For several years after that, he would't walk near that gate. In fact, he'd make a big wide circle around if when he was on the leash and we were going for a walk. He had a very long memory of what happened to him there. In Duke's case, we had just returned from a walk and I took him off the leash to let him walk freely up the driveway. Apparently he stopped to pee on the gate, and the snake suddenly struck him. Neither he nor I saw the snake until it bit him. He didn't even like waterhoses after that, so I know he never forgot. When Spots was bitten the first time, we'd lived here only a few months and knew nothing about pets being snakebitten. We called our next door neighbor and he told us that his mother always saved snakebitten animals by feeding them a raw egg mixed with bacon grease. I tried that and Spots wouldn't eat it, so we took her to the vet, who basically said "either she'll make it or she won't" and explained about the use of antivenin, which he does not recommend. The second time we just called him and he said "either she'll make it or she won't". lol. These old country vets don't get as excited about snake bites as we humans do. Our current vet is a group practice which has a cat specialist on its staff and he is a miracle worker with snake bites. We really didn't think Ranger would make it, but he was willing to try to save her, so how could we say no to that? She's a very sweet cat and a perfect companion. We didn't see her get bitten so don't know how it happened, but all our cats seem to know to avoid snakes. I don't want to know how they learned that. Dawn

I joined the swap before the deadline but forgot to post my list. Here it is: Gaura: Sparkle White, Whirling Butterflies, Crimson Butterflies, Rosy Jane Salvias: Amistad, Caradonna, Pozo Blue, reptans, penstemonoides, sinaloensis, chaemadroides, darcyi-any salvias that are hardy in zone 8 Scabiosa-perennial (Fama, Butterfly Blue etc) Sedum- Sunsparkler series, Touchdown series, Marina, Mr. Goodbud, Thunderhead, Thundercloud Abutilon megapatmican (hardy) Heliopsis: Burning Hearts or Bleeding Hearts Shasta Daisies: Real Series, yellow/cream colored, or dwarf Bergenia Snapdragons-tall annual snapdragons, or perennial snapdragons Maianthemum (false Solomon's seal) Belamcanda "Hello Yellow" Pardancanda (any) Melampodium paludosum (annual) or leucanthum (perennial) Gladiolus-dalenii (parrot gladiolus) or other small flowered or species glads Dianthus Romance series, any hardy Dianthus Nepeta "Neptune", "Cats Pajamas', 'Little Trudy' or any tidy cultivar Petunias Japanese Iris or other species Irises, Euphorbias (any ornamental) Penstemon pinifolius Geraniums-perennial only Coleus (any) Perennial or annuals that will grow in clayey soil and tolerate heat-for sun or shade