Weekend guests...... and 56 bales of hay.

Our friends K & B were here for an over-night visit, along with K's granddaughter E. They have all been here before, but this was E's first over-nighter in the barn guest rooms. Just like our own Miss C, E picked the bedroom at the back of the barn with the balcony over-looking the pasture. That is also Miss C's favorite place to stay when she's here for the night. K and B made themselves comfy in the cottage. The young kids just love the barn. Even if I were a young kid now, I'd be picking the cottage rooms for myself. Miss C says I'm just not a barn-girl.

The temperature must have been over 100 degrees today, but the five of us drove to Washington On The Brazos State Park. I have no idea why. Much too hot for that kind of afternoon sight-seeing, let me tell you. But K wanted her granddaughter to see it, and instead of telling the three of them to go and have a good time and we'll see you when you get back, off we all went. It's a wonder that one of us didn't have heat-stroke out there in the park. It is indeed a very beautiful park, but when it's hot, it's hot, and today was just too blessed hot for that.... especially in the afternoon.


For the past three days, we've had workers here mowing and raking and baling the hay. Today was the baling day...... this huge tractor-combine-thing gathers up the hay that was cut two days ago and then raked up yesterday. Huge farm equipment did all those chores, but the best one to see is the baler...... all that hay getting picked up, rolled up, tied up, then out it pops like a super-giant stunted Tootsie roll. Each round bale of hay weighs about a ton, and there are now 56 bales of hay scattered around our fields.

The men who did the work out there will take away two-thirds of the hay bales for re-selling, which is their payment for the time they spent here. One-third of the hay will be left here for us, and we can sell it to the neighbors who have livestock. A few of our neighbors regularly have to order hay for their cows and goats and horses, so I'm guessing it will be easier for them to get it from us. And of course, I'm thinking we'll make our hay less expensive than the hay bales that they get elsewhere.

We will now be on a regular mowing/baling schedule with the men who cut our hay this week. This work was done last year, just once, and the guy then just did one pasture and got six bales of hay for his trouble. This year-- more hay, higher hay (because we had so many tall wildflowers)-- and it all resulted in the 56 bales. Amazing to me.


I asked our friend B about that huge spider that I found on the back deck yesterday..... she did agree that it was a tarantula. B said that they don't sting, but they can bite-- the fuzzy black ones here are not poisonous, but it can make you sick for a little while if you're allergic to them. (And who knows if you are till you get bit?) B said I was lucky that the spider didn't move while I was spraying it with the Bengal Gold. She said those tarantulas are very good at jumping-- they can reach heights of three or four feet. Wonderful..... another lesson to learn and to remember.

B also said that some people keep tarantulas as pets. (Whatever for?) A friend of hers years ago had a bunch of them and he trained them to respond to his voice...... he would go out into his yard and call them and they would pop up from their hiding places in the ground because they knew he'd have special treats for them. I forgot to ask B what "special treat" would attract a tarantula. Maybe I don't even want to know.

I looked around the backyard deck and the flowerbeds out there today, to see if the sprayed and deceased tarantula was anywhere in sight. I wanted my husband to see it, to see how huge and furry it was. I am so, so lucky that I just sprayed that can of bug-spray on that thing yesterday. The thought of trying to capture it under a bucket (so my husband could see it) did cross my mind when I saw it out there, but can you just imagine if that thing had jumped into the air while I was trying to cover it with a plastic bucket?............ I would probably still be hanging from the mesquite tree out back with my fingernails clamped into the branches.

I am not an insect person, that's for certain. Can't stand them, can't look at them, don't want to deal with them, don't want to see them. And here I am..... in a Hill Country dream house..... surrounded by every creeping crawling thing from the pages of National Geographic.

You are kidding me...

... that is exactly what I just said out loud on the back porch: You are kidding me!

After yesterday's blog about the spiders, I thought my husband had read it and was playing a practical joke on me. As soon as that thought entered my mind, it quickly left--- my husband wouldn't do that, and he's been too busy lately anyway.

As I was sweeping those pesky mesquite leaves from the backyard deck and the picnic table, right there on the porch railing was a huge (enormous) black spider. We're not talking a skinny little spider with pin-thin legs here. This one was huge (enormous), like the fuzzy fake ones you buy at Halloween to decorate the fake spider webs that you put up by the front door. (Not my kind of decoration, but fun to see on someone else's house.)

The body of this morning's spider was as long and as thick as my thumb. His head was the size of a marble. His legs were thick, and bent in the middle as if he had knees. When I saw him on the porch railing, my husband was underneath the house fixing an air-conditioning vent. Not exactly the time to ask him to kill a spider. I got a can of "Bengal Gold" from the house and sprayed that huge (enormous) spider till there was nothing left in the can.

And the spider just sat there on the railing for a few minutes.... I'm watching him, he's watching me. Then his legs started to bend and curl, and he fell off the railing and onto the deck. That's when I backed up about three feet, holding the broom in front of me in case the spider decided to walk in my direction. Thankfully, he went the other way and fell off the deck and into the flowerbeds. I don't know where he is, and I hope he wasn't heading under the porch because my husband is still under there.

With all of that Bengal Gold spray on him, I don't think that spider is going to be breathing too much longer. I hope he had his affairs in order, because today is his last day on this property.

I have never in my life, outside of the pages of a National Geographic magazine, seen a spider that size before. Some sort of tarantula? One more thing to add to the ever-growing list of creatures and critters.

What a release this blog is......... everything goes out of my mind and onto this page and I'm done with it. At least for the moment.

Along came a spider.....

.... and built a web beside her......

I have had it (HAD IT) with spiders. Every morning as I make my way from the back porch to the chicken coop, I carry a big walking-stick in my right hand and I wave it in front of me like a sword. If the neighbors were closer and could see me, they would honestly think I have lost my mind. The stick-waving has a purpose.... it knocks down all the spider webs that were built during the night, and wouldn't you know--- mostly all of them are right along that path from the house to the coop. Twenty-three acres on our property and wouldn't you think the spiders could pick another spot?! Like off in the middle of the pastures or down by the pond or way back past the barn or out near the woods?!

So there I go each morning, whacking that stick against the webs, sending spiders flying through the air and down to the ground and if they land close enough to my feet I just smash them silly. (Please, no letters from the spider-lovers out there.) Some of the spiders are itty-bitty brown ones, others are black with yellow legs, and still others are deep ebony steroid-soaked-spiders with legs that are nearly three inches long. (No joke, no exaggeration.)

You would think that one morning's worth of web-whacking and spider-smashing would be enough for one day. Not a chance. By lunch time, a few industrious spiders have re-built the webs in the choicest spots (like under the arbors or across the courtyard paths). By dinner time, mostly all of the web-sites that were sent into the Twilight Zone at first light are now up and running and ready for you to walk into.... and the longest, thickest part of that blasted web is going to end up right across your face, I guarantee it.

So, along with the neighbors (if they're looking through binoculars) watching me swinging that big old stick around the yard, they will also see me hopping from side to side along the quarry stone path, bending my head towards the ground so my hair will be upside down and my two hands will be flailing through my hair at warp speed to get out any spiders that may have come down on top of me along with their blasted webs.

This part of Texas shouldn't be called The Hill Country. They should have called it The Scorpion Snake Armadillo Raccoon Bat Possum Spider Hawk Coyote Country. And heaven only knows what else is out there that we haven't seen yet.

If it weren't for this beautiful property, this majestic hundred-year old house, the sounds of the horses and goats across the road, the birds and the chickens in our yard, the magnificent sunrises in our side yard and the unbelievable sunsets in our back yard, and the peace of mind that comes over you when you're not interrupted by the insect world and the local wildlife...... I'd be out of here in a heart-beat.

Busy bees.....

It feels like a busy little hive here this past week. Waylon is still underneath the house tacking up the pink blankets of insulation. Every morning, he pulls into our driveway at 6:45, so prompt that we could set the clocks by his arrival. (He has renewed our faith in local handymen.) Every afternoon, my husband goes to Home Depot for as many rolls of insulation as his car will hold. (You need to get a truck! say the neighbors.) Waylon found a 14-inch long black "chicken-snake" underneath the house yesterday and he killed it with a garden hoe. (You need to gun a shotgun! say the neighbors.)

I'm learning more about snakes than I care to know. Waylon says the snakes flick out their tongues to smell what's going on and moving around them. He says they lay their eggs and then go off and leave them, the baby snakes breaking out of the eggs as they grow. I forgot to ask Waylon how many eggs they lay at a time. Six? Sixteen? Sixty? Maybe I don't even want to know. Yesterday's snake was the first sign of life that Waylon found underneath the house. "Pretty dang clean under there.... no trash, no water, no animal droppings." Just the one snake, that Waylon saw before he got too close to it, so he backed his way out from under the house, went into our garage for the hoe, then crawled back in there to kill it.

The yard guys are also here today...... Mario and his son, cutting and clipping and trimming. The cats are inside the house, listening to the tacking of the insulation and the engines of the riding mowers. For once, they are happy to be inside the house. I think, after all these days of Waylon working underneath the house, the cats are used to the new routine--- being inside while work is being done outside.

We've had more than a few heating/air-conditioning companies come by this past couple of weeks to give us estimates on replacing the furnace and a/c units. We can either get everything done at once, or just replace the older, less-efficient models that can bite the dust at any time. Between the insulation under the house that's being done now, and the insulation that my husband did up in the attic a few months ago, plus the new heating and a/c units, the energy usage in this house should be a lot better. With the frigid days of this past winter, so unusual for this part of the state, it would have been nice if the sellers of this house had thought to insulate all of this. Why anyone would renovate a house this size and not insulate the heck out of it is just beyond me.

We continue to water the vegetable patch where the corn is growing. Only thing, the ears don't look like they've been growing much at all. They seem to have quit growing a couple of weeks ago, and the ears that are there are very small. Now that the raccoon has been re-located to the lake, we thought we'd be picking fresh corn and having it every night with dinner. The corn has other ideas. And so do the chickens. This morning as my husband was watering half of the corn stalks, the chickens were pecking away at ears on the other half of the garden. My husband is ready to just give up on the corn that's out there and plant new seeds and try again. I'm ready to just write fresh corn on my grocery list.

Another snake.....

I am wondering if I'm going to start counting snakes, the way I counted the scorpions last year. And it was just about this time, all during the month of June, when we kept finding scorpions in the house. Upstairs, downstairs.... at least a dozen of them, which was about eleven too many.

The other night on the front porch, I was standing there while the dog went down the steps and into the grass for her last few minutes outside. She went down the steps..... up the steps..... Gatsby was next to me and we were both watching Gracie. I let Gracie in the door and I was turning around to tell Gatsby what I always tell him at night: See you in the morning, Gatsby-boy. I had just said those words out loud, then I walked in the front door, and as I turned to close the door, I heard a plopping sound on the porch. Gatsby heard it too and we both looked to the left and there was a brown and gold snake right on the porch. I slammed the door shut about the same time Gatsby made a lunge for the snake, which saw him coming..... so the snake catapulted itself off the porch and into the pine bark down below.

I didn't scream..... but I did call up the stairs to my husband..... I have no idea what I said, but I would bet the ranch that the word Snake! was in there at some point. My husband is always at his computer when I find these things. Maybe that's the problem--- I don't spend enough time at my own computer.

Again, my husband asked How big? "About as long as a yardstick, about as big around as a quarter." What color? Green like the last one? "This one was sort of brown or gray, with gold or penny-colored designs on it." My husband checked the Internet for pictures of snakes. He thinks it was a corn-snake, which is docile and non-aggressive. Depending on the pattern, it could have also been a copperhead. Not so docile, can be aggressive.

Either way, it's another snake.... another creature that we don't want around the house, anywhere near the house. Or the garage. Or the cottage. Or the barn. And there it was, on the porch. How it got there, we have no idea. It could have been resting on the porch railing.... it could have been up in the little tree near the porch and it just fell off a branch and landed on the porch. Or maybe it catapulted itself from the tree to the porch just when I was there to see it, in order to establish its superiority.

I have calmed down with the scorpions. I have even killed them by myself, without calling my husband to do it for me. I have swept up the dead ones, giving them a shot of bug-spray just in case (Bengal Gold brand-- don't live in Texas without it). The snakes, however.... a whole different species, a whole other story.

Our handyman Waylon (still working on the insulation under the house) tells us that having an outside cat will keep the snakes at a minimum. And what exactly is minimum? One a day? One a month? Waylon told me that a cat will chase the snake and that old snake will high-tail back into the woods. Which is fine with a non-poisonous snake. I would think that if an aggressive, poisonous snake bites into a cat, the ending isn't going to be a happy one unless the nearest vet's office is close enough and open.

I guess I should be looking on the Internet for pictures of snakes, so I will know what we're dealing with here. A coral snake isn't a good one, and I've already seen a small one out in the yard. It was dead, and cut into a few pieces by the riding mower that the lawn guy uses. When I saw that in the grass, it looked like beads from a necklace..... orange and yellow. I think there was white in it also, but I'm not sure. Orange and yellow is bad, orange and yellow with white isn't that bad, according to the handyman.

I cannot look at snakes in a book, or in a movie, or even on television.... I shut my eyes tight and blindly press the remote till the channel changes. Snakes just give me the creeps, plain and simple. I did look at some of the pictures my husband pulled up on the Internet.... in an attempt to identify the kind of snake that plopped onto the front porch the other night. I was too scared to look too closely that night, though.... and I slammed the door too fast, and Gatsby chased the snake off the porch too fast. If I had to, I wouldn't be able to identify that snake in a line-up.

Rule-of-thumb: just stay away from all snakes. Period. End of discussion. My husband asked me after dinner tonight if I still liked country living. "Sure I do," I told him... "But I can do without the scorpions, the lizards, the snakes, the raccoons, the possums, the skunks, the armadillos, the spiders, the wasps, the hawks, the coyotes, the foxes..... and we haven't even seen a bob-cat yet."

My husband had two words for me: City girl.

The vegetable garden.

When you plant a vegetable garden, you have high hopes and great expectations. You can taste those red ripe tomatoes as you're digging the hole for the fledgling plant.... your mind is writing salt and butter on your shopping list at the very second those tiny corn kernels go into the ground. You look at that garden patch first thing every morning and last thing before dark. Who cares how heavy that hose is..... you drag it over to where you need it so those baby plants can get all the water they need.

As my dad would have said: Baloney!

About six months ago, my cousin F sent us a beautiful book on gardening in Texas.... everything we could possibly want to know, and then some, about planting flowers and vegetables in each corner of this state. All sorts of flowering annuals and perennials to make the landscape bright and colorful..... every variety of fruit and vegetable that would make my grocery list shorter and my kitchen counter bloom with just-picked dew-licked freshness.

Once again: Baloney!

The reality of gardening..... you coddle those plants and look after them carefully, you water them and feed them and make sure the soil has the correct nutrients. The plants grow tall and green, they thrive with ripening fruits and vegetables. And then, just when you can taste those just-picked zucchini and the fresher-than-fresh corn...... the raccoons come out. These night-time creatures bring with them a few skunks, an armadillo or two, and maybe a possum tossed in for good measure. And, just to make sure that the parsley and basil and oregano plants don't get lonely, the raccoons invite about 1,439 fat green and black caterpillars which will eat those herbs from stem to leaf and then back again to make sure that nothing was missed.

About the only vegetable that has found its way to the basket on the kitchen counter is the tomato... two here, three here...... there always seems to be a tomato or two growing on one of the four plants out there. The plants themselves are six feet high, but the tomatoes didn't get as large as we thought they would.... but each one was delicious.

The zucchini..... we haven't eaten one of those, because the raccoons and the skunks beat us to them. The little zucchini never grew longer than the length of my index finger... they were eaten up (along with the sweet zucchini flowers) in their infancy.

The green beans..... I think I've picked about 15 beans. I did cook them up, and they were very good. The local farmer's market sells green beans for about 50 cents a pound, however, so the green beans weren't worth the trouble. It took more time to make sure the little tendrils were wrapping themselves around the wire fence as they grew. The plants look very pretty out there.... lots of green leaves, hardly any green beans.

The strawberries.... we picked about 26 of them. A basket-full.....! No way. The strawberries got ripe one berry at a time, one day at a time. As we picked them, we cut them in half and shared each one. Not exactly strawberry fields forever.

The corn...... ah..... the corn. The raccoons, with help from the skunks, no doubt, got mostly all of our corn. My husband did catch one raccoon in the trap, and he drove it to the next town and released it near the lake there. Lake-front living for that particular raccoon... and fresh corn is again on my shopping list.

The parsley, oregano, basil...... I planted those three herbs because I need them for the zucchini pie recipe. I had been picking from each of those plants for the past month or so.... till those pretty green caterpillars discovered our garden patch. At first, I was finding just one or two caterpillars. I picked them off, still attached to the stem they were munching on, and tossed them out into the pasture. But they kept coming back, bringing with them dozens of their closest friends. Too many to pick off and toss out into the pasture. I just gave up, and let them have their way with the herb plants. On my shopping list: parsley, oregano, basil.

The eggplants... those plants went into the ground way after all the others had a good start. The eggplant plants are growing taller now, spreading green leaves this way and that, and within a few weeks, they should be mature enough to start sprouting little purple eggplants. I have no doubt that when the little eggplants appear on those stalks, there will be a raccoon sitting in the vegetable patch with a fork in one paw and a jar of Paul Newman's Marinara Sauce in the other paw. Dinner is served.

....... E - I - E - I - O.......

Think pink.

Pink seems to be a strange color for the sheets of thick insulation that go over and under and around the house, but pink it is, and that's what is happening today. My husband hired a handyman to crawl underneath the house and install yards and yards of that thick pink stuff that should have been there all along. Of course, we didn't find out till the middle of last winter that the bottom of the house was lacking insulation. And being that we had this house inspected before we bought it, I have to wonder why the inspector didn't mention that to us.

The handyman, Waylon, got here before seven o'clock this morning. He told my husband yesterday that he'd be here at seven, so we were impressed when he got here even earlier. I don't think everyone in this state runs on the same clock, or even within the same time zone. "See y'all in a few minutes" can mean any time in the next five minutes or in the next five hours, with no explanation or apology if indeed the few minutes turns into five hours. Never complain, never explain, never give a definite time.... it's the Texas way.

Waylon says he likes working in homes on this road..... says he has worked on mostly all of the properties here..... doin' odd jobs and this 'n that for everyone here till they ran out of projects for me. I told Waylon that we have enough projects here to keep him busy for the rest of the summer. After just ten minutes underneath our house, Waylon pronounced it to be clean and cool, not hardly any critters under there at all (which sounded like a'tall).

I've kept the cats in the house today, so they don't go exploring underneath the house. The two little trap-doors are open under there now, and it would seem to me that Mickey Kitty (my Marco Polo cat) would be the first one to scoot under there looking for new adventures. The cats aren't happy with being house-bound today, but at least I know they're away from the insulation, away from the staple gun, and most important-- I know where they are.

It's 11:30 in the morning...... do you know where your cats are? =^..^=

Not exactly a lazy Monday.......

After a few days of putting off going to the supermarket for groceries, today was going to be the day. We've had some weird combinations for lunch and dinner these last couple of days as I chose things from the pantry shelves and the freezer. Going to the supermarket on a weekend is not my favorite thing to do. (Going on a weekday isn't my favorite thing to do either, but husbands and cats and the dog... they all want to eat.)

So there I was this morning, my grocery list in one hand, my purse and keys in the other hand, standing under the breezeway between the house and the garage. So quiet outside you could hear the cats yawning on the porch, I swear. And then I heard it..... all this rustling noise in the pine mulch around the house.... and right after the rustling noise, I heard Mickey and Gatsby jumping down from the porch and landing in the mulch.... two thuds and still more rustling.

As soon as I turned around, there it was on the quarry stones of the breezeway..... a long green snake. Not one of those itty-bitty ones that I've seen so many times around the property. This one was the size of the snakes I've seen in the road, and it was moving fast on the stones, with Mickey and Gatsby right behind it. I screamed. I don't know what words came out of my mouth, but I screamed out something.

I also froze. I couldn't move. My hands didn't drop the purse or the grocery list or the car keys, but I know I was just frozen there on the spot as I watched the fast green blur of the snake darting underneath the back porch steps, and there was Mickey, right behind the snake and going under the steps, followed by Gatsby. Sweet Pea was in the house.... for the past two days, that cat has not wanted to go outside and I haven't forced him. Gracie was in the house, sleeping in the kitchen, and my husband was upstairs at his computer. And there I was, frozen in that spot with a snake under the steps and two cats trying to catch it.

I was not going to walk up those steps. I went around to the back deck and ran up those steps and ran all the way to the kitchen door. One look over the porch railing, and there were Mickey and Gatsby, their tails smacking the quarry stones and their noses pointed towards the steps. Into the kitchen I went, slamming the door and nearly tripping over the dog, throwing my purse and keys on the counter and up the stairs I ran. I don't think I took a breath till I got nearly to the top, then I told my husband that maybe the house was insulated better than we thought because he couldn't hear me screaming from the breezeway by the garage.

A snake! Big green one! The cats! Trying to catch it! Snake! "How big?" my husband wanted to know. (He asked this question because I call anything longer than an inch-worm a snake.) I told him it's as long as one of these stairs! Mickey is trying to get it! Down the stairs and out the back door..... and the two cats are still keeping guard at the base of the porch steps. My husband got out the broom, the rake, the garden hoe..... the only thing coming out from under the steps were leaves and bits of pine mulch. Into the garage he went, and out he came with the shop-vac and the orange extension cord.

So there we were.... my husband laying on the ground (Are you out of your mind?!) by the porch steps, and me on the porch refusing to get anywhere near those steps. After nearly an hour of vacuuming every last leaf out from under those steps, my husband jumped back because he felt the shop-vac grab hold of the snake. By the time he pulled out the vacuum hose, the snake had managed to wriggle itself free. We didn't see where it went, and the cats weren't near the steps at that point-- as soon as the shop-vac was turned on, they went to hide under the bushes near the garage. The snake didn't scare them, but the shop-vac did. Go figure.

After checking under the steps with a flashlight and a mirror (so he could see into the corners) my husband said that the snake was no longer there. I watched him cleaning out all those leaves and checking the base of the shop-vac every few minutes, so I know he was very thorough about it. By the time all of that was done, I was in no mood for grocery shopping, nor much of anything else.

I had no idea that snakes could move so blessed fast. And I froze. On the spot, I just froze. I think that scared me more than anything else. That and the fact that if the snake had bitten Mickey, I couldn't have even moved to save my cat. And if the snake had moved towards me, would I have just stood there? My husband said that the snake is more afraid of me than I'm afraid of it. I had two words for him: Wanna bet?

In the middle of all that snake-hunting and shop-vac noise, one of our neighbors drove down our driveway with a friend of his who is going to mow the hay for us. We told them about the snake, and his first question was "How big?" When we explained the color and the size, the hay-mowing guy told us about a snake he had on his property last week that was as big around as his arm. He said he ran into the house to get his shotgun and couldn't find the key to the gun-case. I don't know what he said after that because my brain couldn't get past the "big as my old arm right here" description.

I thought I was being brave after we had lunch. I went out the kitchen door with Gracie and let her go down the back steps first. I ran down the steps and walked out to the road to check the mailbox. On my way down the driveway, one of those super-sized yellow crickets jumped up from the hot concrete and landed on my arm. I screamed and started swinging my arms in the air, but the cricket jumped off of me just seconds after it landed. As I stood there in the driveway, I looked up at the beautiful sky and the puffy white clouds and yelled out "This is not a good day so far!!!"

We had the last can of tuna fish and a couple of hard-boiled eggs for lunch today. I am out of lettuce, out of avocados. Out of orange juice, out of fresh fruit (except for the plums from our trees). I am nearly out of milk, all out of cheese, all out of fresh vegetables. I really have to do the grocery shopping today. My husband has an appointment to get his hair cut this afternoon. I'm just going to drive into town with him..... he can drop me off at the store and I'll get the groceries while he gets his hair cut.

I know my limitations. There is no way I am going to get behind the wheel of my car and drive it after this kind of a morning. I'm lucky I can type after the snake and the cricket.... and if it weren't for the spell-checker thing here, this would most likely be un-readable.

Location, location, location.......

Early this morning, before most of the Hill Country population was getting ready for church, my husband was driving to the lake with a raccoon in the truck of his car. Even before his feet touched the bedroom carpeting before dawn, my husband was saying "I'm going outside to see if there's anything in that trap."

My husband found one raccoon who couldn't resist the whole fresh egg that was in the very back of the wire trap.... he was sitting in that silver cage and looking out at the corn in our garden that he could no longer reach. Before the raccoon went for the egg, though, he tramped through the corn and pulled up still more stalks which he threw out into the grass around the vegetable garden.

My husband covered up the trap with an old towel, then put the still-closed trap into the trunk of his car which he had covered with heavy plastic. Once they got to the lake, my husband found an old country road that looked like it hadn't seen a car in decades. He backed up into that road, opened the trunk, put the trap on the ground and opened the little door. The raccoon took off like a rocket, he said.... into the woods he went, never looking back. By now, he's probably made friends with other re-located raccoons and they're all sound asleep high up in a tree, resting from their adventures so they'll have energy to search for more midnight snacks after dark.

Our neighbor suggested we put out the trap again tonight, just in case that particular raccoon was traveling with a friend who was smart enough not to get into that trap last night. One more fresh egg for the trap...... I hate wasting eggs like that, but clearly, the raccoon couldn't resist the egg. The other trap my husband set up last night held the skin of the salmon that I cooked for last night's dinner. I thought for sure that the salmon would win over that egg, but that just goes to show you what I know about the nocturnal habits of raccoons.

The traps that my husband is setting up must be held into the ground with iron stakes. Our neighbor D tells us that if there are two raccoons in the yard and one gets caught inside a trap, the other raccoon can sometimes turn a steel trap upside down and then the metal rings fall towards the ground and the little door will open..... and out comes the trapped raccoon. "They work in pairs, usually, and some of these raccoons are pretty smart with gadgets that we buy to keep them under control," said the neighbor. After all the years that D has lived up here, my husband took his advice to heart and so far, it's working out just fine. We're wishing that we had talked to D before our corn got tossed all over the yard.

My husband thought it was ironic this morning that he left so early for the lake..... it was cooler outside at that hour, and there was a nice wind for sailing. "I could have taken the sailboat out inside of bringing that raccoon into the woods." I suggested to my husband that he call our neighbor before doing that to ask him if raccoons like sailboats. (Which I thought was pretty funny, but all I got was a Ha...Ha....)

Out in the yard this morning, I fully expected my husband to say out loud... Oh crikey, she's a beaut!!! as he looked at that raccoon in the trap. But he forgot all about his Steve Irwin imitation because he was just so happy that the trap worked.

When the foxes were inside the barn, we didn't have a problem with raccoons. Now the foxes are gone, and the raccoons have taken over the after-dark prowling of the property. When my husband was shopping for the raccoon trap, he came across one that was more than twice the size of the traps he was looking at. He asked the salesman what the larger one was for. That there's for bobcats.... get one of those hungry bobcats on your prop-ty and y'all won't be worryin' 'bout catchin' raccoons and foxes.

Another day... another lesson.

Trap this!

Okay, we're saying it: Uncle!

When my husband went out into the yard this morning, he found corn stalks torn right out of the ground and pulled away from the carefully constructed wood grid that he built to hold the stalks upright in the wind. Thirty dollars worth of wood, a couple of hours of my husband's time, all for nothing. And the ears of corn that my husband had duct-taped to the stalks (a la the Internet suggestions)... we found those silver circles of tape decorating the yard like cast-off holiday ornaments. Gives a whole new meaning to that song "Silver Bells...."

Okay, okay, okay! The raccoons win! Fresh corn is very cheap here at the Farmers' Market, and even at the local supermarkets. We don't need to be planting corn, watering corn, ooohing and aaahing over the cute little ears growing from the bright green stalks. We've come to the conclusion that it's just easier to drive to town and pay money for corn, rather than paying in peace-of-mind.

However..... my husband did go into town today to buy a raccoon trap. Bright silver shining trap that is now sitting next to the vegetable garden. And have I mentioned, by the way, that the night-time raccoons are also feasting our on zucchini plants? I haven't picked one of those myself, excluding the chewed-up ones that I've found on the ground. So much for my Italian Zucchini Pie recipe, with zucchini picked from our own garden.

My husband asked me what we should put inside the trap to lure the raccoons in there after dark. An ear of corn! What else? One of our neighbors loaned us his trap also, so now we have two traps out there, waiting to be baited after the chickens are in the coop and the cats are in the house tonight. This particular neighbor used to re-locate the trapped raccoons. Now he just takes a shotgun out of his closet and sends them to raccoon heaven. That method is not for us. My husband intends to drive the trapped raccoons over to a nearby town and set them loose near the lake. The raccoons should be quite happy there, with all the boating and swimming and camping-- no doubt they will be feasting on left-overs they can steal from the campgrounds. I hope the campers have fresh corn... otherwise, the raccoons might just find their way back here to our yard. Our neighbor tells us that raccoons can travel four miles to get back to the spot where they know food is waiting for them. How does he know this? Because before he took to using a shotgun, he would spray-paint the tails of trapped raccoons, to see if the same ones were coming back after he drove them away. Less than four miles, he'd see the same raccoons again with the neon-green painted tails. More than four miles, he never saw them again.

At the Farmers' Market this morning, my husband also bought a dozen eggs. Fresh eggs from a local chicken farmer who has more than 250 chickens on his property. (Definitely not a coop that I'd want to be cleaning up, I can tell you that.) Scarlett and Prissy are in their broody state, and Audrey doesn't lay eggs if it's too hot or too cold. Right now, only Mammy is laying eggs... one every day, with the exception being the recent rainy days when we had thunder and lightning. I have less than a dozen eggs in the fridge from our own hens, so I asked my husband so buy a dozen at the morning market. At just one or two dollars per dozen, for the freshest-of-fresh eggs, I stood there and calculated the work that goes into keeping our own four hens. A fifty-pound bag of chicken-feed, odd wallpaper rolls from the thrift shop to spread out underneath the roosting bar (makes morning clean-up easier), fresh water, stale bread, bits of leftover vegetables. Is is really worth having our own chickens when fresh eggs are so very cheap? Absolutely, without a doubt.

Honestly, what else would I be doing seventeen times a day if I didn't have to walk out to the coop with elbow-length oven mitts on to get both Scarlett and Prissy out of the nesting boxes when their little chicken-brains are telling them to hatch eggs that aren't there? This has been going on for nearly two weeks now, and I truly believe that those two hens are loving the extra attention. Plus, with the fresh corn that my husband buys at the Farmers' Market, the hens are getting the cobs after we have dinner, and they peck at those till there is nothing left on the cobs but air.

At one of the feed stores this morning, as my husband was looking at the traps for the raccoons, one of the salesmen told my husband that the female raccoons make "great pets." Y'all can train 'em to use a litter box, just like a cat. And I've trained mine to pry open the kitchen cabinets. And when we have neighbors come over that I don't want to be stayin' too long, I let the raccoons sneak up on 'em from underneath the sofa.... that little raccoon just gets right up there by their ankles and wraps their paws clear 'round their legs.... and just like that (with a snap of his fingers) the visitin' is over and y'all got y'alls house to yourselves again!

It's a lesson every day out here...... a blessed lesson every day.

Raccoons, cayenne pepper, and duct tape.

Which of the above three things does not belong in the same sentence? Sadly, they all do, at least for the moment.

Our corn has grown taller than we could have imagined.... cute little ears of corn are growing on all the stalks. The sad part--- the local raccoons have discovered it and they're having a corn party out back after the sun goes down.

Now you would think that with a dog walking around the property, the raccoons would find another place to go. But Gracie comes in the house at night, and she doesn't stay out in the yard by herself much during the day, so I guess the raccoons know they're safe out there as they play around in the corn.

And playing is what they've been doing..... a bite here, a bite there--- four little ears of corn today had teeth marks from the raccoons. They couldn't have picked just one ear and shared it? This is getting to sound like last summer, when our neighbors J & J kept finding melons in their vegetable patch with just one or two bites taken out of each one. With all the melons they were growing, I think just one or two escaped the midnight munching of the raccoons.

As with all things, my husband did a search on the Internet. Raccoons eating corn. How to stop? Cayenne pepper..... raccoons don't like the taste of it. Peppermint spray.... raccoons don't like that either. Duct tape.... you literally tape the ears of corn to the stalks and the raccoons can't pry the tape off because they don't have thumbs. My husband says that this is going to be like the Wylie E. Coyote and RoadRunner cartoons--- who's going to win?

After dinner tonight, my husband went out into the yard with two containers of cayenne pepper and a roll of duct tape. He sprinkled the pepper all around the corn rows till the topsoil was red. With each ear of corn that's growing, he used the duct tape to attach it to the stalks. Stop laughing. Do you honestly think I could make this stuff up?

While my husband was taping the corn, I was looking at the package of tape. It plainly said Duck Tape, not Duct Tape. Duck? As is quack quack? Doesn't anyone know the correct spelling of duct tape anymore? This is like Santa Claus....... because of that movie "The Santa Clause," we now have a whole generation that thinks Clause (not Claus) is Santa's last name.

Between the raccoons eating the corn, the chickens sitting on imaginary eggs, and the English language getting pulverized by texting and twitting and chatting in acronyms, I just can't keep up.

97 years old.

My Aunt Dolly's birthday was yesterday...... she is 97 now. I called her in the morning and asked her if she was going to do anything special to celebrate. She told me "I already did--- I got out of my bed and put my feet on the floor and I can walk without help. At my age, isn't that special enough?"

Aunt Dolly asked me about the chickens. I told her about Scarlett and Prissy sitting in the boxes because their little chicken-brains are telling them Must hatch eggs! Must hatch eggs! I explained to my aunt how I have to keep taking the two hens out of the nesting boxes, trying to de-program their hatching mode. Aunt Dolly reminded me that Grandpa used to raise chickens when she was a little girl and ...the only time Papa picked up a chicken was when Mama needed one for dinner.

I tried not to think of my grandfather killing a chicken so grandma could roast it for a Sunday dinner, but I just couldn't get that thought out of my mind for the rest of the phone call.

Since we've had chickens in our coop, I have not cooked anything with chicken. For Thanksgiving, I did cook a turkey, but I only took one tiny slice of it. I used to make chicken for my husband on a regular basis, but he hasn't been in the mood for chicken since we have our own hens. I think I've got a couple of chicken breasts frozen in the freezer, and they've been there for too many months now. I know we're not going to be eating them, so I should really defrost them and cook them up for Gracie and the cats. Gracie doesn't bother our chickens when they're out in the yard. She chased them at first, but we called her back, and somehow she learned that the chickens are ours and she just sits out there and watches them walking around as they peck in the grass.

Aunt Dolly says she doesn't know how I manage a big house with so many pets...... you have the dog, the cats, the chickens.... and a husband! I reminded Aunt Dolly that she took care of countless nieces and nephews as we were all growing up, and she had a big house too. "That was easy," she told me... "I didn't have a husband underfoot."

My aunt said that she can't believe it when she looks in a mirror these days and "a little old lady" is looking back at her. She said she doesn't feel old, doesn't feel any differently than she felt 30 and 40 years ago, but as soon as she looks into a mirror, she sees "someone who looks like your grandma looked." I told Aunt Dolly that maybe she's just taking too much time now to look at every little bitty wrinkle that has probably been there for a while, but when she lived alone up north she was just too busy to notice.

Aunt Dolly told me that the problem was her new glasses. "I should have just kept my old glasses. With these new ones, I can see everything--- every wrinkle, every line, every crease. Unless I'm going to do brain surgery, I don't need to see everything! I probably wouldn't look so old if I hadn't bought new glasses."

There's some sort of logic in there somewhere.... I just haven't figured it out yet.

Lots of raindrops.

The rain has been falling since yesterday. Can't remember the last time we had two solid days of rain, let alone just one. The corn stalks are higher than ever with all of this rain, and there seems to be no end in sight for the height of the tomato plants. And wonder of wonders, we're finally picking tomatoes. The night-time raccoons have been feasting on the zucchini, so my plans of making zucchini pie with our own vegetables went up in smoke. I was going to just pull out those zucchini plants, but maybe the raccoons are more interested in those than the tomato plants because they haven't bothered the tomatoes, so I think I'll just leave the zucchini right where they are.

The green beans are slow in coming. I have picked nine beans so far-- not exactly a feast. I'm saving them in the fridge, covered in cold water, hoping to get more by the end of the week so I can cook them up. We have just about given up on the strawberries..... we picked 27 of those, but they ripened one at a time, one a day here and there. Not worth the trouble, when we can buy sweeter and larger strawberries at the store.

With all the rain today, complete with thunder and lightning, the cats are in the house. Both Gatsby and Mickey are sleeping (hiding) under the sofa in the TV room, and Sweet Pea is sleeping on his favorite chair in there. I was reading in the TV room this morning, or trying to-- Sweet Pea jumped on my lap and wasn't content to just be there while I read. He wanted my undivided attention, so he kept moving his little cat-self higher and higher up till he was spread out across my book. What's more fun? Reading that book or petting me under my chin?

The chickens don't much like the rain either. Audrey and Mammy are hiding under the cottage, and Scarlett and Prissy are in nesting boxes in the coop. Once again, Scarlett has taken to sitting in her favorite nesting box, and Prissy is in the one right next to her. At least five or six times a day, I have to go in there and take both of them out of the boxes. I found two long oven-mitts in the thrift shop one day, and I keep them just for the coop-- I can pick up the chickens and my arms are safe from pecking all the way up to my elbows. Scarlett and Prissy don't even fight me anymore.... I think they're getting used to the attention now. I don't feed them when they're in the boxes, like I was doing the first time Scarlett went "broody" and sat in that box for 37 days. Now I just lift them out, toss them out into the grass so they have to spread their wings and fly into a soft landing, and I tell them "Go out and play!" So they do.... but within the hour, they're both back in the nesting boxes. Broody hens. I thought this stage was over with.

While they're in this broody stage, neither Scarlett nor Prissy will be laying eggs. Audrey hasn't laid an egg since the weather turned very hot, so Mammy is the only hen now giving us an egg every day. Before the broodiness started, I had nearly three dozen eggs in the fridge, so it's not like I'm going to run out of fresh eggs. But just the thought of those two hens sitting in those boxes thinking they're going to be hatching the imaginary eggs they think they're sitting on.....! As if I can't find better things to do than scoop out chickens from those nesting boxes. And you have to make sure to hold their wings down when you're taking them out of the boxes so you don't hurt them. Another day on the ranch. Another day in the coop.

The spiders have been busy constructing their webs all over the yards lately. When I walk to the coop in the morning, I carry a long tree-branch in my right hand and I flick that around the bushes and under the rose arbors. If I don't, more than likely I will be walking right into a web that an industrious spider built during the night. I must look like Don Quixote out there in the mornings, flailing my stick/sword through the air as I search for windmills. Thankfully, neighbors are too far away to see me or I know I'd have a lot of explaining to do. "What is that city girl doing out there now?"

Huge spiders here, by the way. Can't stand them, but I don't call my husband to come and kill them for me anymore. Same thing with the scorpions..... I especially don't like to see those, and the ones we've been seeing are dead ones (thanks to the pest-control company and their every-three-months spraying). Last year, when we kept finding scorpions in the house, I never got into bed without first looking at all the ceilings on the second floor, looking in all the bathrooms, and checking underneath our bed. Plus, I kept a flashlight on my night-table and I would wake up periodically during the night and shine that light all over the bedroom ceiling. I'm happy to say I don't do any of that, plus I can kill a scorpion myself now, without calling out both the Marines and my husband. What a difference a year makes.

Weekend guests...

.... and for a change, our guests were real people, not the local wildlife. Miss C and one of her friends got here early Saturday morning, spent the day, stayed the night, then left in mid-afternoon today for the drive back to Clear Lake.

C had her kayak tied up on top of her car, and the kids drove to the lake on Saturday after breakfast for swimming and boating. C knows better than to ask me to join her in anything to do with the water, so while they went to the lake, I went to the little resale shop on the way into town, then drove further into town and bought some extra groceries. I knew those kids weren't going to enjoy a nice big salad after a day on the lake.

Every time C drives out here, whether by herself or with a friend, she gets to talking about "life in the city" and how it's getting too big, too busy, too crowded, too everything. She is a small-town girl at heart, and she would be perfectly content taking care of horses and cows, and she would truly love to raise a pig. Not for meat, mind you, but for a pet. C stays in the guest rooms over the barn, and she loves it there. Two bedrooms above the barn, so plenty of room for her and her friend, and last night they were playing Dominoes "till the coyotes started howling," and she said they had the mega-set of Dominoes spread all over the living room floor up there.

The kids picked a huge bowl of plums from the trees out by the barn, and had just as much fun eating them as they did picking them. C's friend took pictures of the ears of corn on the stalks, the roses blooming, and the grapes growing on the vines out back. They sat on the fence and watched the sun setting, they sat in the breeze on the front porch after dinner, they walked down the hill and fed apple slices to our neighbor's horses. They found things to do even when there really wasn't all that much to do because it was so blessed hot these past two days. I love the fact that C has always chosen her friends well.... all of her friends like life the same way-- simple.

Before we went upstairs to bed last night, I saw the kids out on the back porch of the barn, shining the big flashlight down into the pastures-- C told me this morning that they were trying to find raccoons or foxes, coyotes or deer-- anything on four legs that comes out at night. Actually, we couldn't really see the kids in the dark last night.... all I saw was the large beam of the flashlight and I figured out what they were doing. This was the first time that C brought her friend S here, and she called me when they got back to Clear Lake this evening. She said that they hadn't even driven down our hill yet and S was asking her "So... when are we coming back here?"

Everybody loves it here. No matter their age, no matter their background... doesn't matter where they live. One visit here and they're hooked on our little corner of the Hill Country.

Another day on the ranch...

That's what we keep saying here: Another day on the ranch. That one phrase encompasses just about anything, from a south wind blowing the corn sideways (yesterday) to a family of foxes making themselves at home in the barn (the day before).

It took more than an hour yesterday for the two of us to straighten-up the corn stalks. We have been watching that corn carefully as it has grown up from teeny-tiny kernels to plants that are nearly six-feet high. And the day before the winds came, we found miniature corncobs forming, complete with lustrous silk threads sparkling in the sun. My friend F told me that the corn might be eaten up by the squirrels before we get a chance to pick them, but with all the squirrel-eating critters in these hills, I don't think that's going to be a problem. In the twelve months that we've lived here now, I've seen less than half a dozen squirrels. I would guess that the foxes and coyotes keep the corn-eating squirrel population under control.

The foxes have relocated to someone else's barn now. Yesterday morning, I put on my chicken-coop-cleaning clothes and raked the dirt floor in the back half of the barn. (The front half is concrete and not fox-friendly.) The dirt was very Zen-like when I was done, minus the intricate patterns because I kept one eye on the ceiling of the barn and the other on the dirt. Spiders and flying things are in that barn, to be sure, and I didn't want to be surprised by anyone in the insect world just for the sake of raking a deliberate pattern into that dirt. By the time I was done with that dirt floor, my rubber boots were unrecognizable and my slacks were dust-filled up to my knees. I hosed-off the boots before I set foot on the porch and then tossed those slacks into the washing machine as soon as I got into the house.

We checked the dirt in the barn after dinner last night-- no sign of paw prints anywhere, no sign of a fox's dinner or (pardon me) fox-poop, either. First thing this morning, we checked again. The dirt in the back of the barn was still raked and about as pristine as dirt can be. My chickens were happy about that, because I let them out of the coop this morning and also let out of their tent-covered yard. Both Scarlett and Prissy were in the nesting boxes again, sitting on imaginary eggs, but I put my long oven-mitts on and got them both out of there. I'm sure by now, they're both back in the boxes again, so when this is all typed, I will have to go out to the coop and get them out again. The oven mitts (kept just for the coop) are great for persuading hens to get out of the nesting boxes-- you can pick them up with those gloves, but they can't peck at you because the gloves are so thick.

The rain that fell all day yesterday has moved towards the east, and this morning's sun has helped to make the corn stand taller and straighter than it was before the winds hit it all like a freight train. That was so disappointing, to walk into the yard and see those corn stalks all tilted sideways. What on earth do the farmers do when they have acres and acres of corn planted? They surely don't go out there and set them up again, one by one, as we did with fifty plants. We were halfway through with that unwanted task and I said to my husband Just whose idea was it anyway to plant vegetables?

At the beginning of this week, I was in WalMart shopping for groceries. I didn't have it on my list, but when I passed by the aisle with the bug spray, I thought I'd buy a can just to have extra in the house. While I was in front of that shelf looking for the brand I've been buying (Bengal Gold-- the best!) there was a woman standing next to me, reading the labels on some of the cans. She turned to me and asked me if I knew which one was good. I told her about the Bengal Gold, and we both looked for it, but WalMart had sold out of that brand. As always happens in this state, when a complete stranger asks you a question, it usually turns into a conversation.

This woman had lived in Clear Lake, and then moved further inland after Hurricane Katrina threatened the waterfront area a bunch of years back. (Has that been five or six years already?) Then after Hurricane Ike a couple of years ago, she and her husband bought 48 acres up near Burton and they're planning now to build a house on that property. They already have their horses and donkeys up there, and they put a travel-trailer on the property so they wouldn't have to stay in a hotel in town every weekend. Even though she loves the beauty of that 48 acres, she said she wasn't sure how her life would change once they moved up here "completely... you know, with all of my clothes and shoes and all...."

I told her that our situation was about the same as hers, except we have half the amount of property that she does, but no horses or donkeys. "Just a dog and cats, and chickens... and most of my clothes and shoes haven't seen the light of day since we moved here," is what I told her. She asked me if we could exchange phone numbers and could she call me when they came into town next time so we could get together for lunch? By that time, my husband had found me in the aisle, and I made the introductions and exchanged phone numbers with A. Her property isn't all that far from ours, and I can see us getting together from time to time, especially after her house is all built and finished and they're living up here full-time, not just weekends.

I told my husband that A and I already had a lot in common....... she and I were both in WalMart wearing lipstick and dangling earrings, and bracelets and cute shoes, we had Jackie-O-sized sunglasses with teeny tiny rhinestones on the sides, we didn't believe that white capris were only meant to be worn on cruise ships, and we were both concerned about wiping out the insect population in our little corners of the Hill Country.

A had asked me if I missed the shopping in Clear Lake. "The shoe stores... I miss the shoe stores... and the closest SteinMart is up in College Station," I told her. She also asked me if I missed living in a subdivision. "Not for a minute... all of our neighbors have at least fifteen acres.... and there are days when my husband is the only other person I see."

"Oh dear," said A. It was right then, with her next breath, that she asked me for my phone number.

Fox this!

We have seen and heard all sorts of wildlife since moving out here to the Hill Country, but we haven't yet been host to any particular species. Until recently.

Just yesterday, we discovered three young fox babies (foxettes?) by our barn. Not only were they playing under the plum trees by the barn, but they seemed to be right at home as they scampered back and forth from the lawn to the dirt floor in the back of that barn. There's a space under the barn walls in the back that the chickens had been using as a short-cut to get into the barn, rather than walking clear around to the other side of the barn to get in. The chickens hadn't been near the barn lately either-- they had been sitting in the shade underneath the guest cottage when the sun got too hot in the afternoons.

Foxes and chickens do not mix, unless the mama fox is looking for a dinner for her three foxettes. My husband recently found bones and fur inside the barn. We thought it was one of the baby goats from across the road... that possibly a coyote had got hold of the tiny goat over on that side of the hill and carried it into our barn for his feast. The man who cuts our lawn told us that the bones weren't from a goat-- they were from a long-legged rabbit, a wild hare. Didn't make us feel all that much better.

When I saw the little foxes yesterday, we realized that the mama fox was out hunting, leaving her three young ones in our barn for safe-keeping. Part of the barn floor is concrete, part is wood decking, and part is just dirt, for keeping livestock (which we don't have and don't plan to get). One of our neighbors told us that the mama fox could have hidden those young ones underneath the wood decking. With that in mind, both my husband and our neighbor J stomped all over the wood decking, hoping that the foxettes would run out and go into the field. Not a chance. Their mama told them to stay put and that's exactly what they did. J, by the way, drove right over here when he found out we had foxes... and he told us how lucky we were. What?! Then he offered to loan us a gun so we could shoot them if we didn't want to trap them. Again-- What?!

But... the chickens. Both Scarlett and Prissy were both in nesting boxes inside the coop when I saw those foxes, so I just had to gather up Audrey and Mammy, who were happy to follow me into the coop as soon as I showed them that I had a whole slice of white bread for them. Scarlett (again) and Prissy (her first time) are in a "broody" state..... thinking they're hatching eggs into baby chicks. I recently went through 37 days of non-hatching nest-sitting with Scarlett, and I thought she was over that, and as for Prissy-- chicken-see/chicken-do, I guess.

When our chickens were cooped up, I drove across the road to the neighbor's property-- they have 20 young chickens over there and they weren't home when we saw those foxes, so I grabbed two slices of white bread and went over there to get their chickens into the coop. So hard counting 20 chickens when they're standing on your feet and trying to fly up to your knees to get that special treat of white bread. But I got all twenty into the coop and they will stay there till we know the mama fox isn't out hunting around our properties. (Will we really know when that time comes? She's not exactly going to sign our guest book as she's leaving.)

As for our own chickens, they're in the coop and not at all happy about it. We have a picket-fenced in yard just outside the coop. Very small area running the length of the coop and maybe five feet wide. The perfect solution would be to run chicken wire from that side wall of the coop to the picket fence... the coop gate could be left open during the day and our four chickens would have safe access to the little yard outside the coop. I've tried just closing the picket-fence gate, but our chickens just fly right over it and off they go into the yards.

I needed some sort of temporary fix until my husband has free time (is there such a thing?) to attach some chicken wire to make a "ceiling" on that little fenced-in yard. Bed sheets. Old bed sheets that I was saving to use as drop cloths for painting. Out came the bed sheets, the scissors, the plastic tie-downs and there I was this morning rigging up a tent city, as my husband called it. But it's working. I now have two bed sheets suspended from the fenced wall of the coop to the picket fence surrounding that little yard. And it does look like a camping tent, but at least the chickens don't have to stay on the concrete floor of the coop... they can go in and out of the coop gate and peck and scratch in the grass yard just outside the coop.... and they're protected from the foxes by the picket fence and the bed sheet tenting.

It looks ridiculous, I'm the first to admit that, but at least the chickens are safe. The three little foxes are too small to capture our full-grown chickens, but who knows how fast the foxettes will grow, and who knows if all three of them can gang up on one chicken and pin it down. I don't want to find out. However, as I worked this morning in the sweltering heat trying to secure those bed sheets, I told Scarlett and Prissy that if they didn't get out (and stay out!) of those empty nesting boxes, then I would be happy to relocate those boxes to the barn and they can sit there and keep an eye on the foxes for me as long as they can't think of anything else to do with their time.