As a result of my tech problems, there are some pictures missing from this blog. I have made note of where the pictures will go once the problems are resolved. A little use of your imagination never hurt anyone, right?
Today I thought I'd give you a little insight into the plethora of wildlife we have been exposed to since moving here. The thing that is funny to me is that we didn't move that far away from our old house and our new backyard backs to our old neighborhood so the increase in creature sightings has been a bit of a surprise.
Let's start with the birds. As luck would have it, birds LOVE cedar sided houses and for a few weeks our master bedroom wall was singing with the "tweet-tweet" of birds that had laid eggs in the side of our house. I love birds, but I'm not a big fan of them making a nest in the side of my house. As a temporary fix my hubby pinned up some screening material (once all baby birds were gone of course). We will be sliding thin sheets of metal up underneath those holes and recaulking them in the next few days. Even with the the screen material they were knocking on the siding Saturday morning trying to find a new home. I knocked back and that seemed to deter them for now.
{Insert Pictures of birds and siding}
The bees! This is probably one of my favorite things about this new house so far. Last Christmas I bought by hubby equipment to start his own hive. He took a two day course on beekeeping in the winter, bought a few more supplies, and then purchased a nucleus hive (a hive with an established queen) in the spring, and we officially became beekeepers.
That was the beginning of quite a journey. The first queen and her hive started out great but then we are pretty sure they got attacked by a virus which wiped out the whole hive. They were so weak they actually started getting robbed by a wild hive. It was crazy to see. Bees were duking it out to the death and I got my first bee sting! Ouch!!
With the decline of the first hive Greg's friend graciously gave us a second hive, but for some reason the queen didn't like it here and we think may have swarmed (flown off with a portion of the hive to start a new hive). A hive is nothing without a queen, so we purchased a 3rd queen and introduced her. She was doing well for awhile but when Greg got in there a week or so later she wasn't laying any new brewed (new worker bees) and the workers were making cells for raising a new queen. To make a long story short, we are on our 4th queen for the year. His friend says this is pretty uncommon. We are hoping to get them established enough in the next few weeks so they can make it over the winter. If they don't, we will start again next year. In fact, I'm thinking of taking the class this winter and getting my own hive. A little friendly husband and wife wager my just happen to see whose hive does the best.
My handsome Beekeeper!
Lots of happy bees!
As an interesting side note, my husband names all his queens "Verla" after his grandmother who always had a beehive hairdo. So cute, if you ask me!
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| {Verla #4 is alive and well!! She's the one in the middle with the long abdomen} |
The Bat
When we got back from Europe I noticed quite a bit of scat on our front porch. I looked up in the eves for a hole somewhere that would produce the mystery animal that had left me the present. I could never see anything and so it remained a mystery for several weeks. Then one day a few weeks ago I went and investigated again and when I looked up there he was. A cute little bat hanging from the eves. I don't mind bats but I really didn't want him pooping on my porch. I was going to look into how one gets rid of them, i.e. encourages them to go hang somewhere else, but I haven't seen him since. Greg did see a dead bat on the road a few days later. I hope it wasn't him, but it would take care of my problem. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of him!
The Lizard
A few Sundays ago I was getting ready for church and started to hear my boys yelling for me to come take a look at something. From the excitement in their voices I could tell it was not something I was going to enjoy seeing. Fortunately the hubby was home and by the time I came on the scene the little creature had already been captured. He was actually not little at all and was one of the biggest lizard I've seen around here. He was also living in our basement which just gives me the heebees if I think too much about it. I would have come out of my skin had I found him myself. I HATE fast, slimy, crawling things. I'm not a screamer, but I guarantee I would have screamed had I saw him loose anywhere near me! Yuck!
I SWEAR he was 10x bigger in real life!!
Little Miss Charlotte
One thing we definitely do not lack are spiders, and lucky for me they don't really bother me - unlike many of you reading this. I seriously just don't get the fear of them. I do fear if they are poisonous or not, but not them in general. In fact I will go to great lengths to catch and release them if I think they are harmless. We do spray for them so don't think I just let them run willy nilly all over the place.
For the last few weeks we've had a special guest spider living on our deck. She spins a new web everyday and it's so big I'm expecting to come out one morning and see "Radiant" or "Some Pig" spun in it. I'm pretty sure she's a harmless Garden Spider so I let her be and she is actually just as afraid of me as many of you would be of her. She scampers away every time I come to look at her.
Greg found a bigger version of her in the woods a few weeks ago while doing a service project. He said it was at least 3 inches long. Even I would have jumped a little coming across something that big.
Well there you have it! Some of the many friend we have here at "The 8 Cow House". We love them all - just some a little more than others.
Happy Hump Day!!
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