papnnana........I think nature waxes and wanes. I know I got water snakes in my little watergarden for a number of years, then nothing for the past 4-5 years. I try not to be happy about that! I've saved a couple frogs from the jaws of the snakes......but they need to eat too. It's hard to know who to cheer for! So.....you might be in one of those "not very many frogs around" years. Do you live in the city/suburbs/country? I live in the country and pretty close to a creek.....so I do wonder if that brings them closer. I never heard tree frogs until we had a couple little stocktank ponds......now there are a ton of them in the summer. I wonder if you have a pump in your pond? Sometimes I think they hear the water running and that attracts them. And of course, the kind of predators you have around can make a difference too. Let us know what kind of pond environment you have and maybe we can give you more suggestions. I found about 8 dead frogs in my inground 300 gallon stocktank one spring. I was soooo sad. I think I figured out that I was keeping it too warm all winter, with a deicer that was much too large for it. So now, I keep the pump running for as long as possible, and when it starts to get frozen (the pond and the pump), I put in a very small deicer.....just to keep a small hole open in the ice. I just keep my fingers crossed that there's enough oxygen in there to keep them alive until I can get the pump going again. This weekend it's supposed to be around 1 degree at night. :( What kind of frogs did you used to have? I have mostly tree frogs, then green, and once I had a couple bullfrogs who didn't stay around very long.............which was sorta okay with me. I love hearing their croaking......but I've heard they eat everything and everything, including small children. ;) I'm a big bird fan, so the last thing I want to see is a bullfrog eating a bird. But.......I guess that's just nature, but like I said, it's hard to know who to cheer for! Good luck with your frogs!

Thanks for your help. I will check for the lock washer, it might be it never had it. This particular machine has leaked from the beginning. I always just lived with it because I was in the middle of processing. Should have addressed it ages ago. The gasket indeed did break, not dry rot with age, or breakdown. I am unsure as to when and how, but it did. I know I can replace it. Not argueing, but I do know how to assemble this machine, been doing it for years. Something is wrong though, because it does get hot from the friction, even processing slow and steady. The spiral never quite fit as well as I remember my old machine did. We do empty it out frequently and at the time I had problems it was newly cleaned - mesh had been scrubbed clean. I thought at first I missed a stem and that got jammed, but not the case. I will go over the parts again to make sure all are there. Anyway - still looking at a stainless option. Just wanted to see if anyone had any opinions or owned one that are offered on the web. ....We do have an old Foley - why didn't I think of that when we were stuck the other night?? too tired. Thanks again - I do appreciate it.

Thank you to all who took the time to read my long, novel-like chronicle of symptoms and suspicions. Already working on the cutworm collars...and I had called the exterminator even before I wrote my diatribe. He layed traps. Only one mouse thus far. Oh...and I did start on my own personal comost pile earlier in the summer. But these pictures I put up were of garden #1, during the summer. I bought two cubic yards of the best compost our local landscaping/nursery man carried. I was lucky that my husband just happened to take me to pick it up because I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how much I had purchased. I about died when I went outside from paying for compost in the office to see a large tractor dumping the last scoop full of it into the now overloaded bed of my bewildered husbands big Silverado truck! (see picture...which is only half of what I bought. The first half was put out front!) Honestly, I thought it would be a few bags similar to what I had purchased at Home Depot! Talk about a newbie! At any rate, all of that has been tilled into the garden now before I even planted for the cold crops. I already have sprouted brussel sprout seedlings waiting to be planted again. It is not due to stop raining here until Sunday; if the ground is not too soden, I will plant them and the others that are ready then, place collars on anything that remains, and then put chicken wire tops on everything until they outgrow them. Now, after all this sage advice, I guess it could have been birds after all. Blue Jays? Now those I WOULD see every morning, along with smaller sparrow-type birds, in their busy little worlds, pecking away in my garden, while I opened the cupboard to make coffee. I usually let my dog out to pee pee and she would make a beeline for them. But who knows how long they were pecking away in there and how big some of them were earlier in the morning hours. Maybe even an owl or larger bird? But I think those are dedicated carnivores. (When I lived in Santa Barbara I once saw a hawk swoop down and carry off a pigeon. It was devastating to me. Poor bird. I am so grateful to be at the top of the food chain. But the seagulls will snatch whole sandwiches out of your hand while you are busy admiring the ocean. So I know that birds take things, sometimes heavy things, up into the air and away. Maybe a 2 1/2 watermelon plant? ) Still a bit baffled. But the collars and cages are coming out until the plants are big enough to survive. This post was edited by lindsaybev on Thu, Nov 20, 14 at 13:26

we have a squirrel in our wall we live in austin texas and two nights ago we herd a scratching in our closet we went to go check it out and there was a small hole in the wall. today we heard it again so we went back to where we covered it up with duck tape and a big piece of metal and there was a big hole and we could only see two squirrels. we live in texas so we like to hunt we shot the squirrels with a bb gun and it turns out there are four. so we shot again and again and we killed the mother and one baby so the father and other baby are some where else in the wall so now we dont know what to do. should we fumigate them or wait till they come back and then shoot them