This post has nothing to do with garden spiders really.  I just like this picture that I took a few years ago.  I have had a few of them (garden spiders) on the porch in the last week, and I do love me a good garden spider.  The bigger the better.  They fascinate the children with their trampoline web skills.  And...I did have a cool, huge wolf spider (or maybe not a wolf spider, but whatever it was, it was huge) that had an egg case hatch out on my porch.  There were thousands of teeny-tiny spiders on my gardening shelves.  But, what really caught my attention yesterday as I was tooling down Fern Hollow Lane (towards Mike and Deb's place), and the real reason for this post, was something in the middle of the road that was flopping back and forth.  My glasses are not the right prescription anymore, and I had a hard time seeing what it was until I was right nigh on it.  Then I could see it was a snake. At first glance, it looked like a two-headed snake (like the one at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Building).  After I was able to untangle it in my mind, I could see that it had just one head with one very large and open mouth trying to swallow a huge frog.  I must have spooked it because the frog got loose, but only for a second.  The snake snatched it back up and quickly slithered off into the weeds with the frog squealing.  It was a nice size black snake-maybe two feet long.  May it live to have many successful hunts.

Oh, I received a text today from Natalie.  She said, "I was going to take a picture of Peeta's new praying mantis pet but a hen ate it."  She knows that much as I like spiders and snakes, I do not like praying mantises.  I answered her, "Poor Peeta; happy hen."

 

Photo by Dick Daniels

A few days ago, I noticed a nasty smell near our front door.  At first, I though, "Oh, it's from the Japanese Beetle trap."  Mount Doom, my beloved crepe myrtle, has been poorly this year.  Some might think it is because it is confined to a hole in our little concrete patio...but that is not the problem.  Mount Doom was totally infested with Japanese Beetles this year, and I was close to heartbroken over it.  Japanese Beetles, though, I have learned, are easy to trap...so trap them I have been doing.  That and beating Mount Doom in the evening with a rake and then joyfully squishing the bugs that fall off onto the patio.

But, the reek was not from the beetle trap.  It does stink, but this stink was really and truly by the front door.  So, I said to Kent, "There must be something dead under the porch."  At least, I hoped it was under the porch.  Under the porch is hard to get to, but under the trailer is much harder...I did not want Kent to have to go under the trailer to drag out some dead critter.  So we hunkered down and pointed a flashlight back into the recesses under the porch.  There was a something there, and it looked like a big duck.  Joel and Nat have ducks and I was afeared it was one of theirs.  Or, possibly one of the wild ducks that sometimes paddle around in our small pond.

Kent slithered in through the hole and put that big dead thing in a trashbag.  Now, it is dark under the porch, so he didn't get a good look at it then, but once he got out and handed me the bag, I could see it was not a duck at all.  It was a big black headed vulture.  I do not like black headed vultures.  They have migrated into our area, and they are calf killers.  They are also a very creepy bird.  They love to hang out in dead trees and old buildings, like in the old Simon barn that is in Tyler and Jen's field.   

Bill saw a hurt vulture on the lane the other day.  This guy must have wandered all the way to our porch and crawled under it.  Thanks to Kent, the smell is gone.  That is good news for all the folks who walk through my door.

And, totally unrelated to the vulture, I have high hopes that Mount Doom will yet blaze with blooms this year now that the beetle population is getting under control.  Squish, squish.