Hey Chena, i've been really busy redesigning a succulent/tropcial nook in my yard. I added tons of soil, installed a drip irrigation system and began adding tons of succulents (I think i may have overdone it! lol). Most are very small and will take at least a year to fill in nicely. Here's a list off the top of my head of what i've included in the area: Sedums (a blood-red variety and a blue veriety) Aloe Thraskii (or a hybrid thereof) Aloe Saponaria Aloe Maculata Aloe Dorothea Aloe Ferox Aloe Marlothii Aloe Aristata Aloe Vera Aloe Arborescens Aloe Striata Aloe Ciliaris Aloe "Blue Elf" Agave Desmettiana variegata Agave Americana Echeverias (several hybrids and cultivars) Sempervivums (several species) Aeonium Arboreum Crassula (Arborescens, Argentea and Campfire) Kalanchoe (Luciae and other common cultivars) Hardenbergia Vine Senecio mandraliscae And indoors, i am starting some seeds (including some veggies, which i just recently rediscovered!) Watermelon Mountain Hoosier Watercress Basil "Mammoth" Squash Dudleya Pulverulenta Agave Victoriae-Reginae Mexican bird of paradise Annona Diversifolia Eucalyptus Torquata Aloe Dichotoma Clytostoma callistegioides Callistemon Citrinus

My garden and house caters first and mostly for my dog - he's the most pampered pet you can imagine :-) This includes his own doghouse in the garage (that he hardly ever uses, but is used by the roaming cats in the neighborhood, much to Timmy's distress), an enclosed front porch with doggie door, basket, rug and private sofa, free roaming of the garden, two more beds inside the house, etc. You get the picture - he's the king of it all :-) As for wildlife, since we live on the foothills of a small mountain range and part of a natural park, we do get quite a lot of critters. We have a birdbath that is used not only by the birds but also by the bees and wasps, of which there are gazillions (we are in a honey producing area). Birds in the garden include sparrows, robins in Fall and Winter, loads of blackbirds, gold finches and a multitude of others I can't name. Last Saturday I saw my first swallow of the year. Above us on the hill we can frequently spot hawks, of which there are some colonies in the park. At night owls are a frequent visitor and we can hear their calls many times. Cuckoos are also a familiar sound as soon as Spring is here. I have a lot of evergreens in the garden and this provides excellent nesting sites for the birds. Preferred are the bay trees, laurustinus and the conifers. I'm constantly finding nests whenever I prune anything. I had a resident bat for about a year, sleeping in a closed garden umbrella we had on the patio. Unfortunately I had to remove the umbrella because the wasps decided it was a good place to nest, so it had to go. I was already stung twice, didn't want to be stung whenever I opened the umbrella! Still, bats visit frequently and it's common to see one or two flying around the garden at dusk. Some years we have glow worms in the Spring, which I absolutely love. It's magical to see them hovering around the garden at night. Other assorted critters include geckos, small lizzards, snakes, mice (yuk!), crickets, locusts and the occasional hedgehog. In terms of specifically catering for critters, I keep the birdbath going all year (we don't have hard freezes) and try to plant things I know will be used by the wildlife. This includes berry shrubs like pyracantha which are a major hit with birds in the cold Winter months. I also have a weeping mulberry tree and let its production go to the birds, who have a feast with the fruits. The compost pile is also a good feeding ground and there's a little bird that spends hours there hunting for the small fruit flies that proliferate inside the pile. Butterflies are catered for with things like lantana, mock orange and buddleia. I need to add more larval food to cater for butterflies, but haven't come quite up to it yet. I don't use any sort of chemicals in the garden, don't even spray the roses, and this of course translates into a welcome sign for critters, even if it means that slugs and snails are huge, sigh... I don't use a slingshot to get rid of them, like Edna does ;-), but I do throw them onto a neighbooring field that is kept wild. All in all, I consider a privilege to have wildlife in the garden and have been slowly educating myself to encourage it as much as possible. Eduarda

Rickey, Of course it was Fred. Who else his age is out driving around visiting gardeners in the middle of the afternoon? LOL If you see Billy Fred, do see if you can find out what he knows because he may know more details. Nowadays, when I ask Fred "who" he is talking about, he often can't remember names and will say something like 'you know...that guy that lives over yonder' and, of course, I have no clue who he means. Having said that, I hope that when I am Fred's age (and I'm not sure what it is but think right around 90?) I still get around as well as he does. Sometimes I do have to get Billy Fred to tell me who his dad is talking about because, while Fred always seems to have his facts straight, he does have trouble remembering names now and then. I had wondered about those goats....about how he keeps them safe because I've never seen any kind of guardian dog like a Great Pyrenees out there with them. I heard a loud growling this morning from the woods oddly enough (and I was inside the house and it sounded like it was right there in the room with me!) and it about scared me to death. As far away as your house is from ours, it is odd we've both heard that growling sound recently. It isn't like we're so close geographically that we'd hear the same growl at the same time. I've never heard this sound before and I pretty much thought I'd heard everything there is to hear around here. The dogs were going nuts in their dog yard, and I ran downstairs and didn't see a thing, but the cats were on the porch wanting to come inside. After that growling sound, I canceled my plans to work in the yard. James, I feel like much of what you say is true, but we have both good and bad government employees and always will. I know sometimes the local wildlife people seem to say whatever the 'official' story line is but their eyes and body language are telling you something else. Our local law enforcement officers are pretty good about telling us to 'do what you have to do' to stay safe, because they know they can't be everywhere at once. They also come as quickly as they can when called, but with only 1 or 2 or 3 county deputies/reserve deputies on duty at a time, their response time can be frustratingly slow. Game bird, I promise, if you tell me you see three dinosaurs crossing the road, I'll believe you. And. on a funnier note....Chris was 15 when we moved here and had a huge iguana named Alex. He built Alex a nice roomy outdoor pen, but somehow Alex would escape and run around although he always came back to the cage when he was hungry. We alerted our neighbors, and I showed Alex to Bill one day. We were watching Alex from the road and he climbed to the top of the pecan tree, which was then losing its leaves for autumn, so you could see Alex very clearly. At that point he was about 5' long. When Bill saw him, he said he needed to warn his wife and daughters because he feared they'd about run off the road and wreck their vehicles if Alex ever ran out into the road in front of them. Bill was afraid the women in his family would think Alex was an alligator. Carol, I do think a lot of people know exactly how to play the system. Tim and Chris both work at D-FW Airport, which is incorporated just like a city, and has a large Department of Public Safety consisting of police, fire and emergency medical personnel employees. Their department has several hundred employees and most are wonderful, but there are a couple that of virtually worthless. How people like that keep their jobs is just beyond me. Dawn

So far all the ones they have tested that I know of in all these states originated from the Black Hills population. That includes the young, weak female with the healed foot found near Tulsa. This is the only female out of the dozens they have confirmed this far east. It will be interesting to see where this new one originated. They will know once the tests come back. There has never been a single piece of evidence to indicate breeding populations around here or any states to the east (though tens of thousands of us look for it - including me). In fact, there is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Someday it will happen though now that all areas west of us are full to capacity. Like I have said many times, before we see them reproduce here (released pets not withstanding) we will see dozens of roadkills and/or trail camera pics each year of young adults. Females just don't disperse on their own long enough distances to have breeding populations jump over long distances. I will predict (guess) that we will have at least two more confirmations outside the panhandle this year with all the hunters that will be out and the thousands of trail cameras out there taking pictures every day this time of year.