The list of readers...

... keeps on growing.... I can now add Canada, Poland, Afghanistan, Brazil, and Ireland to the list of new readers.  Thank you all very much!

Gatsby's porch...

Once again, our outside cat Gatsby has decided that he does not like that orange cat anywhere near 'his' porch.

Gatsby has begun howling at the orange/white stray cat every time he sees him. Can I really keep calling that orange cat a 'stray' now?  He's been hanging around our property for about ten months, off and on (mostly on).

But Gatsby has decided enough is enough. He howled and meowed and carried on so much a few nights ago that the orange cat ran off the porch and stayed away for two days and two nights. And me, who kept wishing that the orange cat would just go away.... I was worried that something had happened to him (as in a fateful meeting with a fox or a coyote).

Orange Kitty came back last night....... hungry and meowing... and my husband went on the porch to pet him just like he was doing every night last week. Well, after two days of being away from our porch, the orange cat lost his sense of good manners....... he took a swipe at my husband's hand and managed to leave a nice claw-mark.

"What's wrong with that damn cat?!" said my husband.

He wants a home, said I, but he doesn't know how to 'make nice' so he can get one.

Oh well, the orange cat is back.... Gatsby is howling at him, Mickey is spitting at him, and Sweet Pea is once again watching from the windows.  Why is it that all the male cats come to this house? Although, finding a female cat who could be pregnant with seven kittens would be no picnic either.

Another 'Thank you...'

New readers on my blogs..... from Romania and The Netherlands......

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

It is just totally amazing how many people from around the world find their way from there to here.

Rainy days...

We have had more rain this week than we've had all summer long. The pond looks great, once again filled to the top instead of just that one big puddle at the deeper end.

The stray dogs have gone elsewhere... haven't seen them in a few days. I did see one of the neighbor's dogs on our porch, though. This particular neighbor has two dogs that run after his truck as he goes down the road. If that neighbor comes up this road, the dogs are right behind him, and one of the dogs takes a detour from the road.... running down our driveway, up the porch steps, and he helps himself to the bowl of Meow Mix that I keep there for the outside cats.

My inside cat Sweet Pea heard the dog's paws on the porch so he ran to the window for a look-see, which made me take a look and there was the dog, looking at me through the glass. I opened up the door and chased him away... he was chewing on the last of the cat food as he ran down the steps and across the yard so he could catch up with his owner's truck.

I am hoping that the rain will quit next week, because the contractor that my husband picked is supposed to start work on the roof for the gazebo.  This particular contractor looks like a Ken doll.... not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in his shirt or jeans, and drenched in a pungent after-shave. Actually, he looks like a city boy, and compared to the other contractors who came here to give us an estimate, "Ken" looks very out of place here in the hills.

Can't sleep.... I can hear raindrops falling on the roof and the balcony outside the bedroom. After so many weeks and weeks without a drop of rain, now I can't get my mind to quit concentrating on every single little raindrop.

Stray dogs.

The morning started off with two stray dogs who found their way onto our property... of course they weren't fluffy lap-dogs... one looked like a German shepherd and the other had the rounded snout of a pit-bull. Both huge, both running here and there, and one found its way to our porch and gobbled up the Meow Mix.

I got Mickey into the kitty-coop as fast as I could.... Gatsby came willingly into the house and ran into the TV room.... and I told the orange cat that he was on his own. (Orange Kitty went into the drainage pipe to hide.)

Then I got on the phone to our close-by neighbors........ one has a cat that is sometimes out on her patio, and the other has a very small dog that likes to soak up the sun on her deck.

My husband tried to get the dogs away from the properties up here.... they wouldn't come when he whistled, in fact they stood there in the road just looking at him.  Then my husband got out the air-horn and gave them a blast of that noise.........the shepherd ran off into the hills and the pit-bull dog ran further up the road.

About an hour later, there was no sign of the shepherd and I saw the pit-bull running down the hill, probably searching for his dog-buddy.  We didn't see those dogs all afternoon, which is a good thing.... I'm hoping they either found their way back to where they belonged, or they're off in the woods somewhere deciding where to go next.

I've lost count of how many stray dogs we've seen up here..... there was that big brown hound dog that found its way here on the day that Prince William married Kate (we took him to the shelter on the day he killed one of our chickens).... there were two black-lab mixes that we found one night when we came back from playing cards at a neighbor's house.... then there was Captain January, the little dachshund mix that I found on a freezing day last January (and I still wish I had kept that little guy).... and there have been other stray dogs that we had to take to the shelter just because they were either too big or too unpredictable.

Listen up, people.... if you have a pet that you no longer want, please please please either find a new home for them or bring them to the local animal shelter.  A lonely country road is not a good option for dogs and cats that have once been a part of your family. (And if you're that kind of pet-abandoning person, then you probably should re-think the whole idea of having any sort of pet in the first place.)

Three inches of rain.....

That's what we had here yesterday and all during the night.... more than three inches of rain which nearly filled up every bit of our pond and knocked the electricity out three times.

I was in the post office this morning and that's what everyone was talking about.... the amount of water captured in their rain gauges during those heavy rains.  Having a rain gauge in your yard seems to be the thing to do here.  I have no idea why everyone needs to know how much rain falls at any given time, but a rain gauge is basic equipment on these properties.

With that country-rule in mind, I did buy a rain gauge a few years ago.... I actually gave it to my husband as a gift.... I thought he really wanted one because he kept asking the neighbors how much rain was in their gauges after we'd had a good downpour.  When my husband unwrapped that rain gauge, he said "Why do I need a rain gauge?"

I told him that now he didn't have to ask the neighbors how much rain had fallen....... "You can just look at your own rain gauge now," said I.

"But then I won't have anything to talk about with the neighbors," said he.

That rain gauge sat on a shelf in the garage for six months, and then I finally took it out of the package and set it down into one of the flowerbeds.  When it rained, no one in this house bothered to look at it, and my husband continued to ask the neighbors how much rain had fallen.

The glass and metal rain gauge got dug up by the chickens we had at the time... it was knocked over by the cats.... and it was disassembled and re-located by the raccoons.  When I got tired of looking all over the backyard for the two pieces of the rain gauge, I gave up and put it into the donation box for the local thrift store.

My husband was right. Who needs a rain gauge? All you have to do is ask a neighbor or go into the little post office the day after it rains.

Under the front steps....

Definitely not a cute little bunny underneath the front steps. My guess is that it's an armadillo, and a big one.  The piece of metal chicken wire that my husband put on that hole by the steps was moved away this morning. Not simply moved away, but flung away, as in "Who the heck put this chicken wire right in front of my hiding spot?!"

I left the chicken wire right where it landed. I think we'll have to put the catch/release trap at the entrance to that hole. (I say "we" but I really mean "my husband.")  Any night-roaming animals are sound asleep for most of the day, hiding out in whatever cozy and dark place they've built for themselves. And the animal that's under those steps has built a tunnel going from under the palm leaves to under the front steps, with a long entrance-way hollowed out underneath the paving stones. Sort of like NYC's Holland Tunnel, but Texas-style.

Oh well, that's tomorrow's project..... setting up the trap....... hoping to catch the critter when it comes out for tomorrow night's foraging.... and then we can drive the caged animal to the lake and release it there. (I say "we" but I really mean "my husband.")

Armadillos aren't the smartest of animals..... they will walk right into a trap if you either put the trap right in front of them, or direct them towards the trap with wood slats set on top of the dirt outside their hiding place.

One of our neighbors has re-located nearly 50 armadillos by using pieces of wood to form a direct line from one part of their garden to the catch/release trap at the other end.  Each and every time, an armadillo will get itself from the flower garden to the wooden 'highway,' and then just walk along and follow that wooden trail right into the trap.  The neighbor drives to the lake area in a nearby town and releases the armadillo into the woods there.

We all joke that the little town and the woods around its lake will soon be over-run by an influx of armadillos from this town. Hopefully, one of those re-located armadillos will be the one from underneath our front steps.

Down the rabbit hole...

... and I'm hoping against hope that it's only a rabbit.

My husband found a gaping hole near the front steps yesterday...... actually the same hole that I had found behind the bushes and near the stepping stones around the steps. I was filling up that hole day after day a few months ago, using the dirt that had been 'shoveled' out of it and piled up under the palm trees.

I thought it was an armadillo or a skunk, or even a rabbit or a fox, but we never did see the animal who was making his home underneath the front steps.  Yesterday, when my husband put the ladder up near the steps so he could get to the roof gutters, the ladder sunk right into one of those stones because there wasn't any dirt at all underneath.

My husband put on work gloves and was able to reach underneath the stones, all the way up to his elbow.... which shows you just how much dirt had been removed from underneath that stoned path. We had a bag of topsoil in the garage, so my husband shoveled that into the hole and then replaced the stone on top of the new dirt. Then he covered up the entrance hole with wire..... and now we're watching that spot to see what, if anything, comes in or out of 'the rabbit hole.'

Whatever animal is in there, it's not going to come out during the day, and I'm certainly not going to be sitting on the porch with a flashlight just to have a look-see. Suffice it to say that something has made a cozy nest underneath those steps and if it's still in there during all of the hot days we've had these past few months, then far be it from me to disturb it.

One thing I've learned about the animals out here....... the only way to win the wildlife war is to shoot everything in sight, on sight. And I'm not about to do that, so my motto has come to be "Live and let live, and just stay out of their way."

Thank you...

This is a very long over-due "Thank you!" to those of you out there who are keeping up with all of my blogs.

Not only do I have readers here in the U.S., but on my 'audience' list, I see that I have readers from England, Poland, France, Ukraine, Australia, Germany, China, and Russia.

To say the least, that is very humbling, and so very kind of all of you to take time out from your own busy lives to see what's happening in my teeny little corner of this planet.  As I've written in my blogs, my writing is non-political and with all the madness that always seems to occur around the world, I try not to include that mayhem in my blogs. That does not mean that I am not aware of the current news events of each and every day.

So it is indeed a wonderful thing to know that my writing has been discovered by blog-readers in other countries who may not always have joyful days.  To all of you, I do indeed wish you joyful days and peaceful nights. And I truly do thank you for stopping by to read my blogs from time to time!

Sardines, anyone?

Well, so much for the theory that every cat likes sardines.

Neighbor L suggested to me that I try catching the orange cat with a can of sardines as the bait. Apparently, Orange Kitty has never heard of the "every cat loves sardines" rule.

I think this orange cat showed up around Thanksgiving last year. Since then, we've tried catching him with a catch/release trap, and also tried getting him into one of the cat carriers. Neither method worked. As soon as the orange cat saw that metal catch/release trap on our porch or on the property, he high-tailed it out of here for a few days. Which led me to believe that he got here via a catch/release trap.... someone trapped him on their property and transferred him to a country road, namely ours.

When we tried to get the orange cat into a cat carrier to bring him to the local shelter, he started hissing and scratching... a royal hissy-fit if ever there was one. And again, he stayed away for a few days.  But he always comes back..... he likes our two outside cats, and he's in love with Sweet Pea, our inside cat. (Orange Kitty is a male, and so is Sweet Pea... not that there's anything wrong with that.)

We have tried not feeding that orange cat...... it doesn't work. He still hangs around our porch and underneath the guest cottage.... meowing for all he's worth because he's starving. He wasn't ever a big cat to begin with and when he doesn't eat, he looks like a poster-kitty for anorexia.  So I always break down and give in, and put out a bowl of Meow Mix for him, which is another reason he doesn't stay away for too long a time. He knows a soft-touch when he sees one.

Outside cat Gatsby still growls and spits and howls at the orange cat from time to time, but that doesn't keep Orange Kitty from finding another porch.  Semi-outside cat Mickey has come to like the orange cat's company, but I'm sure he won't miss him when he's gone.

However... I don't think that orange cat will ever be gone. We just can't catch him... can't get near enough to him with him scratching or biting, and he's too smart for the traps. As for the sardines... Orange Kitty turned his nose up at those little fish, and so did Gatsby. Mickey, however, the pickiest eater I've ever had, just loves the sardines. Eats up every bit in the dish and then meows loudly for more.


Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange you glad you found a food that Mickey really really likes?!

A snake-catching thing.

Not that I would be interested in catching a snake, but there are times when we've seen a snake close to the house or up in one of the birds' nests and there's no way to catch them.

Until now.  On the news this morning, I happened to see a county wildlife agent catching a snake with a jaw-like contraption on the end of a metal pole with a gripper-type of handle at the bottom end of that pole.

The wildlife agent held that gripper-thing in his hand, got the red jaw-like part near the snake, quickly closed the gripper handles, which clamped down the 'jaws' at the other end of the pole, and like magic, the snake was caught, couldn't move or get away. Then you can either bag the snake or you can shoot it.

So of course I told my husband about that snake-catching thing... he looked up "snake catcher" on the Internet, and there was that silver pole with the red jaws at one end and the gripper handles at the other end.

"You need to buy one of those," I told my husband.
"And are you going to be catching the next snake if we buy this thing?"
"Of course not," said I.
"And what would I do with the snake after I catch him with this?" he wanted to know.
"Well, then you can shoot it."

My husband thought it was unreasonable for me to think that he would be able to catch the snake with that pole and then successfully shoot the snake...... "One hand holding that clamp shut on the pole and the other hand pulling the trigger of the rifle? I don't think so," said he.

He suggested that I could use the pole to catch and hold the snake while he shot it. "Not in this city girl's life-time," is what I told him.

I told him that he could catch and hold the snake and I could shoot it with the rifle.

My husband reminded me that the last time I used the rifle to shoot at a raccoon, I took aim and then shut my eyes before I pulled the trigger. "So you want me to stand in front of you while you hold a rifle and close your eyes while you try and shoot a snake?"

I guess that arrangement is not an option. But I still think my husband should buy one of those snake catcher poles.

Dove season...

That's the reason for the random gun-shots we've heard lately.... dove season has begun. Hunting season, that is, which means licensed hunters take long rifles and use them to shoot non-threatening gray doves in this state. Give me a blessed break.

I don't understand the whole hunting thing. Unless you're killing animals for food, why do it at all? And if you're going to kill those animals to eat them, then at least do it on the animals' own territory, where they have a chance to out-run your ammunition.  There are game farms in this state, in this county, that have their land enclosed with fencing that's too high for most wildlife to jump over. For a fee, licensed hunters can go onto those properties and shoot all the wildlife they want, whether it be for the meat or for a trophy to hang above their fireplace.

As for the very pretty and softly coo-ing doves...... how much meat can one possibly get from those birds?  And are most of those hunters just using the live birds for target practice?

I've heard the theory that if the hunters didn't kill thousands of doves during this season, then the state would be over-run with those birds. Well, so what? This state is already over-run with fire ants and scorpions and spiders..... if the hunters really want a challenge, the state of Texas should have open season for those insects.... and the sharp-shooting hunters can have a stuffed tarantula hanging over their fireplace.

Gun shots and spiders...

I woke up this morning to my husband asking me "Did you hear those gun shots about an hour ago?"

"An hour ago" meant five-thirty this morning, being that the clock said 6:30 when I first opened my eyes this morning.  I had not heard the gun shots, and for that I was grateful.

One of the nearby neighbors has set up a deer-hunting blind on his property. He sits up in that elevated blind and waits for deer to come grazing on his land.... and then it's the 'Bambi' story all over again.  Not exactly a sportsmanlike thing to do, to say the least. But it's his property, and far be it for anyone in this state to tell anyone else what they can and cannot do on their own property once they're out of the big-city limits.

So when my husband told me about the before-dawn gun shots, I thought it was that particular neighbor. My husband, however, disagreed. Because there had been so many shots, he thought that the neighbor behind us had been target-shooting.

In the dark? Who needs to shoot at a paper target before the sun comes up? (That neighbor has a shooting range set up in a corner of his property for target practice.) My husband tends to think the neighbor was practicing night-shooting, just in case.  In case of what? Predators? Burglars? Stray deer who escape from the other neighbor's property?

As for the spiders..... the first thing I did this morning as I went into the kitty-coop was to nearly step on a huge brown spider. Huge... nearly as big around as a medium-sized tarantula, but it was brown, not black, and not hairy. A steroid-laced spider, but very thin, with the thinnest legs I've ever seen on an insect.

The spider wasn't moving, but I didn't think it was dead either. I had a can of wasp spray in the coop and I grabbed it and sprayed the life out of that spider, literally. Actually, the spray came out so forcefully that it sent the spider flying into the grass outside the coop, where I sprayed it some more. Just in case.

The big brown spider, after a few minutes of twitching, went to that big spider web in the sky. And for that, I was grateful.