Natives of the land

This visitor was eating my swiss chard.

The first year I planted swiss chard it was rapidly disappearing. Something was eating it faster than it could grow.  I soon discovered the something to be grasshoppers.  They can destroy a plant over night almost.  Some years they are almost a plague and some years few are seen.  When I can catch them I feed them to my chickens.

I almost got a handful of these when I was picking pole beans.  One must be careful when putting their hand inside a veggie bush.

I came very close to being kissed by this guy when I was picking tomatoes.  If half of his body had not been caught in the bird net it would have been a trip to the doc for me.  He couldn't strike his full ability because of the net, lucky for me.  I had to free him or he would surely die.  After that close call I employed the help of a rake.  I pinned his head "Jeff Corwin" style with the rake and cut him free with my other hand only to have him slither right back through the net on the other side of the tomatoes.  I had to cut him free again.  Chicken/rat snakes can be real pests if they are eating my chicken eggs but they also serve to keep the rodent population under control.

A much larger version of this fellow was allowed to go free after slithering up the wall and gorging himself on a swallow nest.  It was very sad for some but survival for others in the animal kingdom  - "the food chain"....snakes are higher than swallows.

He had a few of our eggs in his belly!  But my husband and his trusty shotgun interrupted his meal.

Amazing, both these gals are real sissys when it comes to snakes but they happily posed for me along side the chicken house marauder.  When taking an evening walk I saw the grass was moving about, kind of like the scene in Jurassic Park when the raptors are hiding in the tall grass and about to eat the people.  It was an eerie scene and the dogs saw it.  They stopped and stared as something was moving quickly through the grass.  I stood there kind of dumb like, not realizing it could be a snake and then continued on.  I felt as if I was being stalked.  I came to a grove of trees and the dogs stopped again looking up the trunk of the tree.  I then focused my eyes on the tree trunk to see a large camouflaged snake slithering to the upper branches.  It positioned itself in the small branches and leaves, poised in midair to look like the tree.   There it remained trying to catch an unsuspecting bird.  I had to move on because it was getting dark quickly, chastising myself as I went for not having my camera along.

The next day my husband called me to bring the short shotgun to the chicken pen.  Waiting patiently in the coop was this large snake hoping to get an egg.  My husband poked at him with a stick and he dropped to the ground.  I shot at it as it slithered off  into the weeds.  Damn, I missed it.  I'm no good with a short gun.  Give me a long gun and I never miss.  A few weeks later the snake was back and it had grown.  My husband shot him while he was resting inside the chicken coop.  He then posed for the camera with my friends.

Probably an offspring of the one in the picture above.

Below are the porcupines my husband sent to the great beyond.

These guys were waiting to eat the porcupines we murdered in the middle of the night.

I think this is a katydid but not sure.

Mating grasshoppers. Is this a minage a trois? Or is the third one a sex therapist or voyeur?  Can you believe they had the nerve to mate in my garden.  It's probably where their offspring will be born and my veggies will be their pantry!

Mrs. Walking Stick posing for me!  I love these insects.  They have such personality.  I can't help but wonder what they are thinking about me. I believe this one is thinking "poop on you".  When I see them in the road or about to be murdered by one of the dogs I always remove them to safety.

I was dumb founded the day my husband called me to the window to see the "big deer".  I stared at it for quite a while trying to figure out what was different about it.  It's ears were so big and it really was the biggest damned doe I had ever seen.  As we continued to stare, the bushes beyond it began to move and out walked, "holy shit, it's a camel", but of course it wasn't.  I could not believe my eyes, this was the biggest deer I had ever seen, it must be the mama.   They strolled up close to the fence and lingered a bit before turning and disappearing into the cedars.  Why had I not thought to get a picture of these "amazon deer".  It took me a few hours but after retreating back into my mindless day of knitting and gardening, it hit me.....and I was embarrassed to admit it but I had to tell my husband that what we had seen earlier in the day were elk.  How embarrassing....I knew there was something about those ears!  It's just odd to see elk roaming freely in these hills.  There are plenty of them on game ranches.  This lucky family must have escaped being the target of a paying "hunter" on a game lease.  Some "good ole' boy" would have taken them down for a photo opp.    It was good to see them roaming freely and I hope they still are.  I have a friend who resides in Alaska who would not have been impressed or fooled by the appearance of these large creatures.  She gets moose in her yard on a regular basis!

White tail deer.  The lady below was posing for me.  I took this from the window of my car.

She was only about thirty feet from me and the dogs on our evening walk.

An eerie moon.