I like your pictures! We don't get Horace's Duskywings here in PA, but we do get Wild Indigo Duskywings. I just read that Horace's Duskywings overwinter as caterpillars. I raise Wild Indigo Duskywings every year and I had some late ones a couple years ago that I brought into our tool shed for the winter. I wish I had left them outside because they all ended up dying. They must need some special care, and I don't know what that is for sure. I had some up until a few days ago and decided to put them back outside rather than keep them in a container and probably kill them again. Cathy

Thank you Helen and Becca. The adult Cecropias only live a few days. I put mine outside the next night in a mesh hamper and it attracted a couple males. It's a shame they don't fly around in the day time. They're kinda pretty. Someone in another forum commented that they wanted to do their living room in those colors. : ) Black Swallowtails do eat rue Helen. Giant Swallowtails do too but they look different, like bird poop sort of. Becca - Welcome! Please stick around.

I'm petrified of dead mice and living ones out here in the New Mexico can carry Bubonic Plague or Hantavirus. So, we use a combination of mousetraps (that DH has to empty for me), steel wool into every possible opening they can get into and pure peppermint oil. Our pest control people told me that mice (and packrats, another huge problem out here) have highly sensitive noses and for some reason hate the smell of peppermint. It must be the pure oil, though, and not the peppermint extract sold for cooking. I stuff plastic webbed tubing with cotton balls, tie off both ends with rubberbands or plastic coated wire ties and then put several drops of peppermint oil on them. I put them in corners and along the walls where I know the mice travel, as mice follow the urine scents they leave as they walk and tend to use the same routes over and over. I buy the peppermint oil at my local Ace Hardware store. You may be able to get the tubing there, too. I'm still using the bunch my pest control people gave me, so I haven't had to buy any as yet. Re-moisten the cottonballs every month. I've been using mine for a couple of years now, so they do last. Here's the oil I use: And here's what I use to make them with: I've also used one of those high frequency emitters outside in our seating area on the front portal. It needs to be plugged into an outlet and seems to have worked fairly well. I need to remember to buy a new one as mine broke a while back. Lynn

One of my old cats use to love to drink out of a glass (I think she liked it an extra bit when she thought it was a person's glass of water). As she got older, had more health problems, and needed to drink more water, I sometimes got in the habit of setting a glass of water out somewhere near to where she was. Her brother loved to drink from a dripping faucet and could manage to get in the tub to drink out of that dripping. Sometimes I plugged the tub and then he would have a little reservoir of water to play in after a few minutes, and I could turn off the drip. Could or would your cat get in the tub? Sometimes they like ice and if you throw a few cubes into the water bowl it will intrigue them and get them to drink a little more. Good luck.