Tonight was Round Two. Arriving home from a shopping trip to Dallas, I went into the chicken coop to turn on the heat lamp to keep the keats warm overnight and there was a big old long chicken snake stretched out on the chicken roost. Of course, by the time I turned on the lamp and saw him or her, I was already past the snake and it was between me and the door, so I had to go back past the snake to exit the chicken coop. (sigh) Several "hysterical woman" phone calls later, two sets of neighbors arrived, gloves and guns in hand. (We have the world's most wonderful friends and neighbors.) One dragged that ugly old snake out of the chicken house, the other shot it, and peace and calm reigned again. I did call DH at work to tell him that his "snakeproof" chicken coop, as he has repeatedly described it since building it--most recently two days ago--is NOT snakeproof. (I wish it was.) I believe we will spend his days off attempting to do some more snakeproofing. The good news is that, for the second time in a week, a snake got into the building but not into the bird brooder cage, which DS apparently did an excellent job of snakeproofing. And, I hate to say that for fear I will jinx us and the next snake we see will be inside the cage eating keats. And, by the way, fresh, home-grown tomatoes are an excellent "thank you" to give a neighbor who comes running to rescue your keats from a big ol' bad ol' snake. I gave one neighbor a bagful and promised one to bring one to the other neighbor tomorrow after I pick tomatoes. Only six more weeks until the keats are theorectically large enough that a snake cannot crush them and eat them. Of course, it still will be a battle with the other predators, but the guineas usually can fight that battle on their own pretty well. Ada, my cousin's cat was picked up and carried away by a red-tailed hawk about 25 or 26 years ago....and then the hawk dropped the cat into a pasture and it made its own way home, a little scratched up and bloodied, but it survived. However, from what I recall, that cat pretty much stayed inside the house after that....and that cousin had a big snake problem as well, but with western diamondback rattlers.....I'd rather have the chicken snakes. Dawn P.S. If the neighbors hadn't come to our rescue, I guess Kristine and I would have shot it, but we would not have dragged it out of the chicken coop first, because we weren't going to touch it....and we didn't really want to blow a hole in the wall.

I'm not a grandma yet, but my little ones crack me up. The other day my 4 yr old came up to me while she was eating a banana and said "Mommy, I really like bananas cuz they're so much good" :o) At our house we say things like "that's tasty" and "I'm snuggly" and I catch myself using those phrases all the time. We like Doritos chips alot and we call them "the red chippies and the blue chippies" (nacho and cool ranch). The other day at work everyone cracked up when I said "I'm going to the vending machine to get some blue chippies" lol

Jay, I just do not understand why the coyotes seem to be losing their fear of humans lately, but it is obvious they have. I miss the good old days when they turned tail and slunk away like the varmints they are. Maybe too many are breeding with feral dogs and too many dog genes are wiping out their fear of human beings. I am glad that the one Judy's daughter saw didn't come after her. I know it is very rare for them to attack people, but occasionally one does. I have read about the fairly new hybrid Coywolves but aren't we all too far away from wolf habitat to have them here? I am fairly sure we are down here at my end of the state. Since you're so close to Colorado, I could see Coywolves maybe being more likely there. For those of you who haven't seen anything about Coywolves before, here's some info on them: CoyWolf We are seeing the same recklessness on the part of bobcats, but since they are smaller, they don't scare me as much. That doesn't mean I want to get too close to one. I also think we are seeing them out more in daylight, year-round, and it doesn't seem to matter if it is a dry year or a wet year, so I'm thinking they are not necessarily being driven to hunt in the daylight hours because food is scarce. I don't know if coyotes and bobcats feed on foxes, but I assume they do. We see tons ot coyotes and bobcats now and almost never see a fox. I miss seeing the darling little red foxes and gray foxes running up the road. (I wouldn't feel that way if one was trying to grab a small chicken, like a banty of a half-grown standard chicken.) And, one more thing. Ever since the flooding of 2015, we almost never see raccoons in our yard. Before that, we had them all over. We aren't seeing many possums or armadillos either. At first I attributed this to the flooding, and figured it merely swept away a lot of them. Maybe it did, but maybe it didn't. Maybe the predators are eating them. Carol, That's always a possibility. In the bad cougar year, my hands shook so much after an encounter that I had a hard time opening the door. It wasn't even locked, I don't think. It was just that my hands were shaking so much I couldn't turn the door knob. I tried to call Tim and had a hard time operating the cell phone, and it didn't matter because he was in one room with the door closed and his phone was 3 rooms away. (This caused a loud disagreement because I already had told him over and over to keep his phone near him because I was having so may wildlife scares.) The time a skunk chased me from the back garden area to the house was almost as scary. It wasn't that I thought the skunk would kill me, but I feared he'd catch up with me and bite me and then I'd have to have rabies shots. Reading what I just wrote has me thinking I have lost my mind and should just move back to the city. What in the world are all these wild things doing in my life????? We have so much more wildlife now than we had when we moved here. That's not right. They should be afraid of us and should be vacating our property to avoid close human contact, and they certainly aren't doing that. Dawn

MamaP it is so nice to hear how your family celebrated you. I love the cards in many different places. May this year be happy, healthy and worry free for you.