Elephants on Parade...In the Garden?

As you might have picked up in my Pittsburgh Zoo post, I have a thing for elephants. I've collected stuffed animals and figurines, read books, and admired them in zoos for years. But a few years ago my mom bought me a metal elephant with blue plastic sides a few years ago. It is meant to be outside and has a solar light in the middle, causing it to glow blue at night. But I had left it setting in my room for years, just sitting around. So this past week I moved it outside and I really like it.

Please excuse the weeds and slightly blurry picture, my batteries where dieing and I didn't have time to focus.

Flooded Seedling Table

Opossum

I think I caught what has been freckling out my chickens and eating eggs. I caught a male opossum some time last night and shot him this morning.

No snakes where harmed in the making of this post

Today I started to move the carpet and metal sheets around in the garden to kill of move of the grass, while  yanking up what remained. Seeing lots of worms and spiders (part of the reason I miss George, she loved to eat spiders) along the way. About mid way through I find these two:

  Which is no big surprise, when ever I'm killing of grass I find them. But what most people think is odd is, I really don't have a problem with snakes. Both my dad and granddad exposed me and my siblings to snakes as children (even with that my sister still hates them) so as long as they are not poisonous and I know they are there I'm fine. These two I picked up and moved out of the garden so that I didn't step on them and moved on with my work. Ended up seeing/moving 10 snakes, some of which were about 3-4 inches long and the biggest was about a foot long (which I didn't move out, he moved too fast for me to catch). But no snakes where harmed and I got some garden work done.   

Fawn Watch 2011

This time of year I'm on the look out for fawns. I've seen plenty of deer the last few weeks including several out by the coop, but I hadn't seen any fawns until yesterday. Yesterday while riding into town, just a mile or two from home stood a mama and her fawn, who was nursing. Mom quickly got nervous about our stopping and started to move away from the fawn to protect it, but the fawn who was busy nursing lost its balance and fell over!

So I'm kicking my self for not having a camera on me, but I can't wait to see more fawns and hopefully get some good pictures.

Not a fun night

 I wrote this yesterday, so all of this happened Wednesday night. I would have posted then but site wasn't working, but here it is:

Last night I went out to lock up the chickens and discovered Chipmunk standing at the bottom of the stairs and Kernel, Red, and one of the BR/EE along with several of the hens out in the yard, after dark. So I do a quick look over of them and started running to the coop. When I reached the small(er) apple tree, I saw something run out of the coop and into the woods. It was larger then a cat and dark colored, currently I'm betting another raccoon. But as I reached the door I saw feathers, barred feathers. So I race in the coop and counted the birds inside (all of which were fine) and then counted outside and repeated that a few times. Everyone is accounted for and as far as my quick check revealed everyone looks to be looking okay.

But then the fun started, the majority of the birds outside where too freaked out  to want to go in the coop. I got a few of them to go in by going in my self, but the others weren't having it. So after several failed attempts and squawking chickens, I used the rack as a guide and final got them all inside.

Unfortunately this means I will be trapping again. I have no problems with predators going about their business in the woods, but when they mess with my chickens, we have problems.

Hope