To quote the sage advice of the Springfield, MO band, "Big Smith": "If we didn't have those bugs attachin', we'd never know the joy of scratchin'" :) My job requires me to be miles in the wildnerness all day, nearly every day, all summer long. So, I just CAN'T use the poisons because I'd constantly be bathing in them. We just duct tape the bottom of our pant legs to our hiking boots, tuck in our shirts, and keep a roll of duct tape handy for seed ticks. Otherwise, we just enjoy the glorious feeling that comes from scratching those bites! Makes us know that it's truly summertime! Generally, we have between 1 and 1000 ticks on us by the time we get home, but we're happy and tired and know we're ALIVE! I know, I know, this isn't really helpful advice to most. But really, aside from the slim chance of a disease, there's really a lot of psychology involved in the desire to be rid of the "pests". Also, FWIW, I've heard that a tick must be attached 6-12 hours before a disease can be transmitted, presumably because the tick must be filled with some blood to have it sqeezed/regurgitated back into your body during removal. So, if you just keep up with picking them off....

Actually, Dswan, I kill wildlife fairly often. Only in the appropriate season and only what I eat...and I don't feel bad at all about it. But I can sympathize about the snake...or any other critter that gets killed for no good reason at all. I've sadly run into enough boneheads over the years (and many aren't hillbillys...not sure if we technically can legally call them "hillbillys" in Canada...it may be like "champagne" is only rightfully applied to certain wines produced in the appropriate districts in France..perhaps we can call them "sub-alpine oriented peoples" ) who seem to feel that the only appropriate response to any critter on their property is extermination. I have a skunk that lives under my front verandah...not so much lives but loiters. In the several years that it's been resident, I've smelled it only once, and my olfactory abilities are finely honed. I've enjoyed watching the old girl raise litter after litter of handsome young skunks. A visiting relative was shocked by my entire family's nonchalance over the skunks. I told him that we learned to accept them and their odd habits, in much the same way my family came to accept him. Still, on his own little slice of rural bliss, he routinely dispatches any and all skunks, coons, and squirrels as they are "vermin". I find this appalling. What's worse is that he is an extremely civilized, well read and thoughtful individual...and unless Manchester, UK qualifies as part of Appalachia, I'm doubting his hillbilliness. Every day I hear complaints about Canada geese, cormorants, and sundry other birds and mammals. More and more, these complaints are coming from retirees and yuppies, refugees from the urban sprawl of Toronto or Ottawa. I hear comments about control and culling, and how the environment is "out of whack" Personally I'd like to see the exposion of these minivan driving Homo sapiens brought under some sort of control..they've taken to building their large bulky homes in every corner of our once proudly rural township...they clutter our roads and insist on trying to recreate the exact situations they left behind...if anyone has any suggestions I'm open.

We had daily visits from cardinals immediately after hanging our new birdfeeder this spring. Unfortunately, we also attracted all the neighborhood squirrels, english (?) sparrows, and rats! We gave up on the birdfeeder after the squirrels killed two plants underneath and pulled the birdfeeder down; it was a good try. Now our fountain attracts a pair of catbirds and the sparrows daily, the cardinals occasionally, and a pair of doves just recently. One of the pools in the fountain seems to be just the right depth for baths! The rats seem to have moved in under our porch despite the removal of the feeder, where we piled some bricks and rocks from garden excavations. Apparently we need to clear it all out to convince the rats that not only will we not feed them, but we won't house them, either. Sigh. Our campaign to attract birds continues, however. We just replaced some sad-looking lilacs by our porch (moved them elsewhere) with Black Beauty elderberry, which we are hoping will contribute to a bird feast this fall. We also just added a blue princess holly and her prince, and a couple of low-bush blueberries. Susan

It took the birds 6 months to find my nyjer feeder when I first put it out. When they finally found it, the goldfinches attracted other birds to my other feeders. I had them hanging off the bottom of our seldom-used 2nd story deck, so they were semi-shaded. I also made a "bird bath" out of a boot tray - it was less than an inch deep and a good 2' long and about 16" wide. It was black, so I wouldn't put something like that out in the sun. I changed the water and scrubbed it out every day, and "sterilized" with vinegar (and rinsed and scrubbed again) about once a week. I sterilized the scrub brush in a bucket of bleach water overnight before sterilizing the "bird bath" the next day, so that the brush was fresh and clean for the post-vinegar-bath scrubbing. So - the night before, on cleaning day - I dump and scrub the bird bath; then fill it with vinegar; put the brush in the bleach water. Next morning, dump the bleach water and the vinegar thoroughly rinse the brush and let it dry in the sun (helps drive off any remaining chlorine). scrub out with the sterilized brush Thoroughly rinse the bird bath; start over again This winter I hope to make a large ceramic platter (I'm an amateur potter) with a glazed interior that will tolerate being sterilized with a bleach solution. I plan to bury that to it's lip in one of my raised beds and keep it filled with water via a dripper line. I'll make something similar for use as a butterfly puddler. Having a water feature can only help in attracting birds, but patience will help as well. One thing I would suggest is to get rid of the "songbird mix" and feed only black oil sunflower seed, safflower seed, and nyjer (in a tube feeder), in the way of seed. Every "songbird mix" I've ever seen has a high proportion of "junk" seed in it which attracts house sparrows, to your peril. At my former residence, they weren't much of a problem, but here they have mobbed my feeder to the point where I had to stop using it. They even scared my hummers away, as well as the mountain jays, mountain blue birds, and quail. Sadly, their seed scattering ways seemed to actually ATTRACT pigeons, LOL! I'm going to try to put the sunflower seed (which has to be hulled due to the former owner of this place having put in Astroturf - impossible to clean sunflower hulls out of) in a mesh feeder that only clingers can use and see if that helps. Otherwise, it's hummingbird feeders and the quail block, and the nyjer mesh feeders I have, and that's all I'll be able to put out here. Maybe an upside-down tube feeder. But nothing for the house sparrows!