Yet another new bug...

I wish Mother Nature would give me a blessed break.

On the porch ceiling last night, just outside our back door, I noticed this thing hanging upside down... long and thin, with even longer and thinner legs.... and it kept moving its head from side to side to look down at me as I looked up at it.

My husband looked at the bug and we both thought it could be some sort of 'praying mantis.'  He didn't want to kill it, or even move it, because those bugs are "good bugs," he told me. (Is there really such a thing?)

This morning, that good bug was still up there in the same spot, with its neck swiveling to watch me as I tried to get in and out of the back door. (Did it really stay up there on the ceiling all night long, hanging upside-down like a bat?)  I was imagining that if I slammed the back door, that bug would come falling down on my head. (Not exactly a good thing for a good bug to do.)  So there I was, tip-toeing out the back door and closing the door so softly, trying not to disturb that bug this morning.

Enough already.  I asked my husband to please come downstairs and move his good bug further out into the garden so I wouldn't have that ugly-looking thing hanging over my head every time I walked out the back door.  My husband took the broom and tried to get the bug to walk on the broom so he could bring it to the flowerbed and release it there. The bug wasn't cooperating at all.

When my husband tried to be more persistent with the broom, the bug curled up his tail like a scorpion. Well, that did it. No more Mr. Nice Guy and his 'good bug' theory...... my husband took that broom and slammed it against that bug at least nine times. (The porch is just fine, by the way, but the bug is history.)

Turns out it wasn't a praying mantis at all... not even close. It was something called a 'stick bug,' and they will curl up their tails as a defensive ploy, but they don't sting or even bite.  This stick bug was brown, and thin, and it looked like a stick with long legs. Ugly, ugly... and prehistoric looking.

That was the first one we've ever seen out here. But.... I know how that goes. We've seen just the one. I know deep in my heart that there must be thousands of them out there on the property and they just haven't found their way to our porch yet. Oh goodie. Something else to worry about.

Go ahead... make my day...

I went shopping for cleaning supplies at Walmart today, and while I was there, I stocked up on pest-killing stuff.  When I looked at my cart, one would think I lived in a barn with a dirt floor.  I had six cans of spray for the wasps, two packages of glue traps for the mice, and one can of stuff that's supposed to kill spiders and scorpions.

I've been finding scorpions here and there, but they've all been dead, which means the red cans of 'Bengal Gold' work very well. I've also found some dead beetles and wasps inside the house, which I attribute to the Bengal Gold spray as well.  I have no idea how these flying and crawling things are getting into the house, but all they need is the teeniest smidge of an opening, which I guess an over-one-hundred-year-old house is going to have.

This morning, there was another mouse on one of the glue traps in the utility closet. That closet is enclosed with louvered doors, and as soon as Sweet Pea comes out of 'his' room in the morning, if there's a mouse caught on one of those traps, he stops by those doors and he won't move a whisker.  When that happens, I have to put him back into the TV room before I open up those louvered doors.... I do not want to have to bring Sweet Pea to the vet and explain how my cat got his four paws caught on glue traps.  It took a lot of cringing and apologizing (to the mouse) while I got that glue trap out of there and into a plastic trash bag. Outside to the trash can it went, poor thing, with me apologizing every three seconds.  ("I'm sorry... so sorry... really sorry...")

Bad mouse-karma, for sure.  I'm glad we're not going to DisneyWorld anytime soon... I wouldn't be able to face Mickey and Minnie this week.

Round and round the vultures go...

The field across the road from us was cut yesterday.... all the tall grasses are gone, and as soon as the tractor left the property there, the vultures started to fly over in wide circles. Around and around they went, eventually landing in the spots where the tractor had run over nests of mice or (sorry to say) rabbits.  It is a cruel world out here in the peaceful hills.

There were more than a dozen huge, huge vultures in that field for most of the late afternoon... and they all must have had a feast of thanksgiving with the tiny bodies left behind in the wake of the tractor blades.  The same thing happened in our own fields last month when the tractor-guy came here to cut the grasses and bale the hay.

I kept the kitchen curtains closed for most of the day yesterday. Once I realized what was happening over there with the vultures, I didn't want to be looking at them every time I walked into or through the kitchen.

I'm also wondering if the mice that got caught on the glue traps in our utility closet were refugees from the field across the road. Two mice yesterday, one this morning. One would think that with two cats outside and one cat inside, the mice would just stay away from our house and our porch.

The vultures were gone this morning, but I'm wondering if they'll be back to make sure they didn't leave any leftover morsels behind. Ugly, ugly birds, without a doubt.

Things that go bump in the night...

Let's see... where do I start?

As I type, there may be something flying around in my husband's office across the hall from my sitting room.  The minute he heard something buzzing in there, he asked me to get the bug spray, which of course was downstairs in the kitchen (it's never right where you need it).  By the time I got down there and back up here, the flying thing had disappeared somewhere in his office..... either in the fan-light or behind a bookcase.  My husband refused to "just spray the whole room till the can is empty" (my suggestion) so he spritzed some of the bug-spray behind a bookcase and kept the door shut. Tomorrow morning, we'll either find a dead winged insect in there, or a bunch of live ones who were invited to a midnight fly-party by the first invader. Needless to say, I won't be the one opening that office door in the morning.

At some point during last night's sleep, I got bit by a spider. I have a huge swollen bubble on the ring finger of my left hand. I'm pretty sure it was a spider because there was a dead black spider on the floor by my side of the bed this morning. I vaguely remember scratching my hand in the middle of the night, so I'm thinking that I must have felt the bite while I was sleeping, and inadvertently slapped the spider from my hand and onto to the floor, killing him in the process. (Bad spider karma, for sure.)  First thing this morning, I took the sheets off the bed and tossed them into the washing machine.  I resisted the urge to make a little map for the next spider, giving directions to my husband's side of the bed.

In the past five days, there have been two little mice caught on glue traps in the utility closet that holds the furnace/air-conditioner units.  The first mouse must have been stuck there for days, and he was barely breathing when I noticed him on the glue trap. Into the trash can he went, poor thing, with me apologizing as I used a long clippy-thing to pick up the trap.  The second little mouse looked like he had just been caught, and my husband was here when I found that one. My husband picked up the glue trap, with the mouse wriggling away and trying to escape, while I cringed in a corner of the kitchen.  Into the car went my husband, with the wriggling mouse and a bottle of nail polish remover.  He drove down the road towards the main highway, got out of the car with the glue trap and the polish remover...... and poured that remover onto the glue trap.  The polish remover softens the glue after a minute or two, which frees the mouse. No doubt, that was one happy mouse. And no doubt, that little mouse will find his way back to our utility closet sooner or later.  (Good mouse karma for my husband.)

Tonight just before I shut out the lights downstairs, I heard something on the porch. I turned on the light and there was a raccoon, looking around for the bowl of Meow Mix that's out there for the cats during the day. (And it's out there sometimes at night when I don't remember to bring it inside.)  When I turned on the light, the raccoon looked up at the kitchen door, squinting his eyes a bit as the light hit him. I opened the door and told him to go away.... which he did. But I've no doubt he came right back when I turned off the light. Tomorrow morning, I'll find the cats' water dish turned upside-down and my husband's garden shoes will have been moved to the other side of the porch.

So here I am.... it is after 1:30 in the morning as I'm typing this.  Tomorrow morning, my husband will ask me how I slept.  When I tell him that my mind was filled with flying insects, biting spiders, glue-trapped mice, and back-porch raccoons, he will tell me that I'm letting my imagination get the best of me.  Pooh to that.

Back from The Big D.

We were in Dallas over the weekend, and came home late yesterday evening to find that the wasps and the barn swallows had been busy while we were away.  New wasp nests have been built under the eaves and the little stinging creatures were busily primping those nests early this morning. My husband got out the 238th can of wasp spray and started attacking them.  He also looked on the Internet and found someone who has developed a long pole that attaches to a can of wasp spray.... hook up the spray, hoist the pole, and supposedly you can spray a nest that's two stories up near the roof. My husband ordered one of those, and we'll see how good it works.

The barn swallows continue to build upwards on all of the existing nests.... some of them are as big as one of those wide straw hats the ladies wear to the Kentucky Derby, and most of the nests are now at least ten inches in depth. How in the world are the baby birds going to climb out of those?  I can only hope that the swallows are also building tiny little ladders.

This was our first trip to Dallas........ and I'm thinking it won't be our last. We found a great Greek restaurant up there, as well as a superb Chinese restaurant, and the most fabulous bookstore... we went to the bookstore three times, and I walked out each time with a sack of books.  We also found a New York-style deli with authentic NY foods but minus the attitude.

We walked around the Dallas Arboretum (wonderfully peaceful and beautiful) and not once, not once, did I see a wasp. (Why is that?--- Because they're all right here in my own backyard.)

Tractor tales...

If we had a tractor, we could better control the weather.  Our across-the-road neighbor had his tractor out again today, plowing up his two fields that we can see from our porch. During this plowing process, his goats were in another fenced-in field, so as not to be in the way of the plow.  Not that this particular neighbor is so intent on protecting his goats, it's just that he doesn't want to waste good goat meat that could get caught in the tractor blades.

The goats across the road are raised for two purposes only: lunch and dinner.  That neighbor offered my husband and I a just-killed baby goat ('cabrito' is what he called it) when we first moved in here. Thankfully, he didn't bring the cabrito across the road with him when he offered it to us. Had we accepted his offer, he would have driven down our hill and up then his hill and returned with the prepared-for-the-barbeque baby goat. We politely declined. And I didn't even explain to that neighbor that I don't eat meat...... to someone who can raise and then slaughter his own goats, I wouldn't expect him to understand my unusual-for-Texas eating preferences.

In any case, we're expecting more rain later on today, for the simple reason that we've seen that tractor plowing up those fields again this morning.

Wet stuff from the sky...

We haven't had rain in quite a few weeks now, but anyone who lives in our little community could have told the television weather wizards that today would be the day for rain up here in our hills.

And how would we have known that?  Simple:  The across-the-road neighbor has been tractor-ing up his fields for the past three days.  It just never fails..... when he tears up his fields, we get rain when he's all done. He finished up late yesterday afternoon.  It started raining this morning.

This particular neighbor has lived up here on his property for nearly 40 years. He raises goats, cows, and chickens, and he has a horse in one of the pastures.  He also has dogs that can herd the livestock, and cats that have kittens all year long and sometimes end up here on our property. (Orange Kitty being one of them.)

So when that neighbor tills his fields with that tractor of his, we all know that rain will fall the day after he puts the tractor back into his barn.  As I type, I can hear thunder off in the hills.... I'm hoping for a good soaking rain that will top off the pond.

City folks on the road...

I can always tell when there's a Houston car on our road..... they drive very very slowly, ooohing and aaahing over all the cows and goats and horses in the nearby pastures.  The other day, one of the city-ladies even got out of her car and walked in the tall grass to pet one of the neighbor's goats.  I saw all of this from my porch, and I was tempted to warn the woman about fire-ant mounds and snakes that like to hide in the tall grass as they wait for unsuspecting mice.  But I figured that before I could make my way from my porch to where she was in the grass over there, she'd be finished with her goat-petting.  I watched her walking out of that un-mowed grass and she was wearing sandals with sparkling rhinestones. Definitely city shoes... I have sparkling sandals also, and they've come out of the closet only twice in the five years we've been here.

We had a fox at the end of our driveway the other night..... an adult fox, not one of the five babies that had been in our barn.  The fox just walked back and forth at the end of our driveway, inspected the mailbox, looked up at both of the light fixtures, and then went on his way up the road.

Just yesterday as I walked in the courtyard behind the garage, a huge cricket jumped up from the grass and landed in my hair.  I didn't even scream..... in one hand, I was holding our cat Mickey, and in the other hand I was holding his bowl of Fancy Feast. When the cricket decided to hitch a ride with me, I was on my way to the screened-in kitty-coop with Mickey.  That cat has been limping lately and I'm trying to keep an eye on him and keep him as safe as possible on these 23 acres.... and sometimes that means keeping him in an enclosed area.

So in a split second, I had to decide whether to scream bloody murder because there was a cricket in my hair or keep walking with Mickey.  Good cat-mama that I try to be, I kept walking.  With every step, I could feel the weight of that cricket in my hair, as if it were a fancy barrette that had come loose. When I got underneath the rose arbor by the coop, the cricket jumped off and landed in the rose bushes.  When we had the chickens, we didn't have crickets because the hens ate every last one of them. However, when we had those chickens, we also had more snakes because they would go after the fresh eggs.  One thing eats another out here....... I just hope there's nothing out there in our woods with a taste for Italian city girls.

And speaking of snakes......... my friend V sent an eMail to tell me that all the creatures and critters out here serve a purpose, so I should more or less accept them all. (Easy for her to say.... she was a biology teacher and also worked in a nature center...  her tolerance for all things crawling and creeping and slithering is much higher than mine.)

In V's eMail to me, she told me that an aunt of hers was reading in bed and just got a feeling that someone was watching her. She looked around the room and there was a huge snake on her fireplace mantel, just looking at her as she read.  Not a problem for the aunt... she was a country woman.  She closed her book, got her gun, and shot the snake dead.

So there I sat in front of my computer last night, wondering if the snake's blood spattered all over the fireplace, the carpeting, the bed linen, and (heaven forbid) the book.  And then I went straight into our bedroom and looked at our own fireplace mantel, and then I looked under the bed, and I even picked up the afghan that's folded at the foot of the bed. Nothing there. Nothing anywhere.

I can tell you one thing, though..... I had stopped looking underneath our bed for scorpions, but I will be resuming that habit.... only now I'll be looking for snakes.

July 4th Weekend

It's been a perfectly hot holiday weekend, complete with a pouring-down rain shower yesterday. This is July in Texas, it's supposed to be hot, so that's fine. As for the rain, we really needed it, so that's fine also.

On the 4th, we drove into Chappell Hill for their parade. That teeny tiny town gets so many visitors for their annual parade, probably because the festivities are old-fashioned and fun, nostalgic and nice. We've gone to that parade each year since we've moved out here, and the parade gets longer, and more popular, each time.

They had more vintage cars this year, and a huge herd of longhorn cattle, each animal wearing a saddle and holding a rider. Plus, the highlight of the parade--- the World Famous Marching Kids' Kazoo Band, made up of children of all ages, all wearing matching tee-shirts and playing a tuneless symphony on little plastic kazoos. Now if that isn't country, I don't know what would be.

We had lunch on the 4th with friends up the road...... and found out that J's daughter L just recently got engaged.  J showed us a  photo of her daughter and her fiance, and the expression on L's face as she's holding her blinged-out left hand up to the camera is just priceless and beautiful.

My husband put up a new mailbox at the end of our driveway.... the original one was old and wobbly, and not nearly big enough for some of the books that I order through the Half.com site.  On the first day that mail was delivered (after the 4th) our mailman left a note in the box, telling us we made a good choice and he thanked us for the new box. I had to laugh... did we buy that mailbox or us, or for him? Actually, though, with the larger box, the mailman won't have to drive to our back porch and leave over-sized book packages which will now fit into the new mailbox. So no wonder he's happy.

Orange Kitty is still on our porch..... friendly as can be, unless you get your hand or your leg too close to him, and then he tries to capture you with those long claws of his.  That cat hasn't grasped the idea of 'do not nip the hand that feeds you.'  When I go outside, I carry a long red umbrella and keep it pointed down towards the porch, just to keep Orange Kitty away from my legs.  I would give anything to get rid of that blasted cat. Something tells me that he'll be around till we get old and wobbly....

Peacocks, possums, and dragonflies.

Just when you think it's safe to go out on the porch..... there was a huge possum on the back porch tonight. One of the biggest I've seen since we've been here. My guess is that it was a very large male, or possibly a pregnant female.  I'm hoping it wasn't a pregnant possum.... we don't need baby possums around the house. Honestly, those animals aren't the cutest things ever created.

The orange cat happened to be on the porch when the possum walked up the stairs..... Orange Kitty ran towards the possum, seemingly daring it to take another step. The possum looked at the cat and turned itself around right on the spot and walked back down the stairs. Score one for Orange Kitty.

The neighbor's peacock (which I had been calling King George) hasn't been around here much lately. I've heard that the peacock has made himself quite at home in another neighbor's yard, feasting on her flowers, scratching in her garden, and hanging out with her chickens. Every once in a while, though, I do hear something up on our roof, which I can only guess is King George. Our roof and the upstairs balconies were his favorite sleeping spots at night last month..... so he could be digging up B's garden during the day and then spending his nights on our roof pretending he's a weather-vane.

Dragonflies...... we have so many of them around our property lately. No matter where you are during the day, you're surrounded by these black and white dragonflies which aren't afraid to fly as close to you as they possibly can. Their saving grace is they're pretty, and with their unusual colors, it seems as if the tips of their wings have been painted with black squares. Given my choice of wasps, bees, or dragonflies.... my choice would be the dragonflies. At least they don't sting.

It is 2:30 in the morning as I'm typing this..... I woke up because I heard something walking on the roof.  I pray that it's just King George.  Do peacocks walk around a roof in the middle of the night?