DANGER IN THE WELLHOUSE

So this weekend, I was outside in the beautiful weather and decided to check out the well shed.  I opened the door and looked inside.  Mostly clear, a few crickets hopped around and then I saw these two.

I took a picture from up high...see them there?  Here, let me get closer...

This was the first one.  Sorry, this one is a bit blurry, I was in the dark, with an LED light, trying to keep my hand steady enough to take a picture.  It might be hard to make out the mark on the abdomen.

But in this next one, it will become clear what they were...

BLACK WIDOWS!!

Yikes!  The well house is the perfect spot of course, dark, no one going in and out all the time, humid.  Spiders love that.  There are also some Daddy Longlegs in there, but those won't cause harm to you, ha.

I took the Stem spray (for spiders) and dispatched them quickly.  We can't have dangerous spiders in a spot we (and technicians/repair people) have to go into to check/adjust things.

We just have to be careful!

CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE SLITHERY KIND

New house update will be tomorrow, I didn't get my photos uploaded in time...but trust us, it will be an exciting one!

This weekend, I was scoping out the yard ahead of mowing, looking for rocks, pieces of wood, etc.  Oh and looking out for that electrical line, when I saw this:

See it there in the grass?  Maybe?  Let me get a close up for you:

There it is!

In fact, here, check this out:

I captured it (ON VIDEO, ha).  I believe it's a rat snake, common and non-venomous...and bonus points, they take care of rodent control.  It was headed toward the house and I walked around it and guided it back to the grass and the shady are of a tree and the pasture behind us.

Still, not something you want to just randomly run into but we will be getting used to sharing our property with the native wildlife.

'Tis the season for #farmshark!  You never know where it might show up.

CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL

...that are causing problems, ha!

Last weekend when I mowed, I encountered this in a remote spot on the property:

The grass/ground was torn up in these two spots.  We'd have to guess feral hogs?  Thankfully, there are no other signs of this anywhere else (and I was all over the property on the mower) and nothing close to the house.

Are there other animals that could do this or most likely hogs?

Then, there was this on the porch:

We had a bag of mulch that was NOT like this when we left the weekend before, ha.  Something had torn into it in several spots.  Raccoons?  Opossums?  Armadillos?  They are small openings and on the bottom of the bag, so it would appear that it was not anything large.

Any thoughts on what might have decided to try a snack of bark mulch?

NOPE NOT REACHING UNDER THERE

I always move the hose when I'm done watering the fruit trees and usually coil it up neatly.

The week before, I just put it all in a pile because I was tired.  I came out this next weekend and reached down to grab it...and that's when I saw it.  You see it the photo above?  Here, let's get closer:

At first, I thought it was a live snake and my heart skipped a few beats.  Then I realized it was the shed skin of a snake, about three feet long.  I had been about to reach under the house to get the sprinkler head where it had fallen, but I decided it would be better to use a rake to grab the hose and pull it out instead of sticking my hand under there.

TURTLE PASSING THROUGH

Was checking the fruit trees and area when we saw this little guy or gal headed through.

We think it's a Texas box turtle.

It was in a hurry (well, as much of a hurry as a turtle can muster, ha!).  I started to pick it up and help it on over to the shady area where it was headed, but I didn't want to do anything to stress it. 

I thought that it had an interesting looking face from this angle but wait until you see it from the front:

Look at this face!

I zoomed in on a closeup photo I took.  The markings make it look like it has an open, gaping mouth with fire inside and teeth, ha!  

We took a page from the Godzilla movies and named it Gamera! 😄

FERAL HOGS AT 2ND FAMILY

The hogs are back...at least at the front of the property.

"J" from 2nd Family sent this image to us.  She bought a trailcam after seeing our pictures and put it in her yard.  This is from her front yard porch looking toward the carport.

She captured images of these feral hogs roaming around in her front yard.

The next day, she found this part of her yard rooted up.  There were some large stones that they overturned, looking for grubs and stuff we presume.

A week or so later she moved the camera to the back of the house and captured these in the backyard.  

She said nothing was rooted around in the yard this time as the ground is pretty hard (we're drought-ish again) and so there isn't a lot for them to get to.

This part of the back of their house is about 2 acres from our front yard fence so we'll have to keep a close eye on things.  Again, it's been 10 days since this photo and they haven't seen them since.  Last weekend, we checked around thoroughly and we didn't have any issues either.  Hopefully the dry ground is making them move elsewhere.

FERAL HOGS ARE BACK

A few weeks ago, we posted HERE about feral hogs that had come through.  There was no further evidence of them but now that things have greened up from the rains, we think they might be back.

When we were out there this weekend, we saw this:

Several areas in the yard where the grass had been rooted up and damaged.  Then we looked around back and saw this:

One of the raised beds (this is the pomegranate) had been dug up and another one nearby had been messed with too.  The trailcam didn't catch them but 2nd Family said they had some feral hogs in their yard a few days ago but their dogs were barking and scared them off.

We have the fishing line around the orchard area to keep the deer out and it's worked great so far.  Deer brush up against it and get spooked and after a couple of times, they just avoid the area.  We've gone two years now with no leaves or branches nibbled on but I had the levels at about waist high and higher (to make using the small mower easier).  But I didn't think about anything lower and smaller getting in.

So I decided to put two rows of lines around the "lower" part of the fruit tree area.  Hopefully it will work the same way for them.  They had 17 beds to get into and they only did this one and part of another so maybe there was nothing interesting and they moved on.

FERAL HOGS HAVE ARRIVED

Deer, coyotes and now...

One thing we've never had to deal with at the farm are feral hogs.  In many parts of Texas, they are a menace to yards and properties and are a huge problem.

Then we saw this on the trail cam night vision.  What are those things?  Lots of little animals in the yard.  About a dozen that we could make out in the images.

A few nights later, the camera caught this...

....a mother hog and her litter.  They might seem cute but feral hogs can be aggressive and will absolutely destroy a yard.  They root around looking for grubs and things and can just plow through a yard like a bulldozer.  even flowerbeds too.

Image via Texasfarmbureau.com

This image is from Texas Farm Bureau to show what a couple of dozen feral hogs did to a property in a single night and here is another one...

Image via Texasfarmbureau.com
...the front yard of a home in a neighborhood.

We are hoping though that because we are in a drought, the yard is dry and the ground is hard as a rock, we will be OK, for now.  They are doing what they can to find food and hopefully just passing through.

However, they can also be very aggressive.  In all the time we've had the property, we've never had to deal with this and 2nd Family said they haven't either.  Perhaps the drought is pushing them in our direction but whatever the cause, we're going to have to be careful and stay observant moving forward.

COYOTE ENCOUNTER

So...I was watering the orchard area and I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye.  Something stood up and came out from under the shade of the trees on the property behind us.

At first I thought it was a fawn because there are quite a few deer on that property and it was smallish and tawny brown.  Then I realized it was a young coyote!

It looked at me, I looked at it and we stared at each other for what seemed like a long time.  It turned away and ran off another direction, periodically looking back.

It's not in this photo, this was taken after it ran off and I resumed watering so we could show you where I was and where it was. I think the watering and my timer going off after each watering was enough to make it run the other direction.

This is not the same coyote of course, but this is one we captured on the trail cam a couple of months back, one of many captures on the trail cam.  This one is walking across the front yard and down the driveway.

Look at the deep green, sigh.

Here are two more coming back from the other direction on another day.  We always hear that they are as scared of us as we are of them, but it's still a bit unnerving to just have one about 25 feet away.

We're gonna have to add this to the front yard!

___________________________________

Every year during Shark Week on Discovery Channel, we find some photos of the elusive farm sharks that appear from time to time at the farm...

Forget snakes, this is reason enough to stop and turn around on the mower for sure!

#farmshark

SNAKE TIMES TWO

Apparently it was snake-fest last weekend.

Now this first one is a bit different...

...there WAS a snake here.

These are the side steps on the front porch.  When I got to the farm I went up the front steps, up and and down a few times unloading stuff etc.  Then I got on the mower and when I went around the corner of the house, there was a snake, right here on this bottom step, probably warming in the sun.  I never even saw it while I was on the porch.  I grabbed my phone to take a picture and it slithered off the step and under the porch.  It was a solid reddish brown snake, not sure what kind it was but at this point it was the best kind, gone.  

Then I was mowing and I was on a back trail.  It's a narrow trail that is just the width of the mower.  I ducked under some tree limbs and my hat and headphones came off.  I stopped to get them and as I stepped off the mower and looked ahead of me...

...see it there?

Stretching the length from one side of the trail to the other?

Here's a close up.

If you click to enlarge you can even see its head...looking at me.  It appears to be what we call in these parts a "rat snake", a non-venomous snake common here...at least that's what we hope it was.

I was not going to continue forward for obvious reasons, not only would it not be fair to the snake but it could have lunged at me as I got closer to it with the strong vibration of the mower.

So I backed up, which is not easy on a narrow trail, and got out of its way to finish mowing elsewhere.  We'll leave them alone if they leave us alone.

Maybe we need this sign...

SNAKE TRACKS

Saw this at the farm when the grass was tall. I was walking to the mower shed and I saw these.  At first, I thought "hmm, that's weird..."

It almost looked like where a hose had been laying but this is the front yard and no hose there...

Then I saw another one nearby that was another kind of s-shape.  Again, I was thinking of what it could be...maybe rainwater runoff?  That would be weird though to be so narrow...

Then it hit me, SNAKE TRACKS!  They looked exactly like where a snake would slither through the tall grass or stop to warm up in the sun.  Because the grass was so high, it displaced it just like our footprints do.  It gave me goosebumps but I kept an eye out and went on to the shed.  I figured once I was on the mower, that would scare them off.  

Never saw one the entire time but all I could think was "there is one somewhere here...watching me from a distance..."

We keep a machete hanging in the mudroom next to the broom and mop.  Hey, don't judge, LOL.  I'll make sure to carry that with me in any long grassy areas.

The flashlight would be good at night, but let's be honest, there is no way I'd be roaming around in tall grass in the middle of the night.

NOPE...

MYSTERY HOLES IN YARD

 When we got to the farm a month or so ago (before the mower incident, ha), we saw these holes in one part of the yard.  I mowed and in this spot I mowed really short because we wanted to figure out what they were.

Our first thought was hoof prints, but we looked closer and they were too deep and random for that.  It seemed to be holes that were dug by some animal... 

We're in Texas so of course feral hogs are a possibility but none have been seen in the area and certainly 2nd Family would have had some damage since feral hogs are crazy destructive.  We're guessing it could be something else common to Texas, an armadillo.

Armadillo, image via Wikicommons.com

For those unfamiliar with this prehistoric looking animal, they are prolific across the Southern US.  They are harmless but, as you can see in our pictures, if that is what did it, they can mess up yards and flowerbeds.

There haven't been any holes since these.  I was going to put the trail cam in the spot where they were and see if I could catch it but the holes stopped.

Still not sure that's what did it though...

BABY CHICKS

Stopped at the feed store the other day to get some fertilizer for the fruit trees and we noticed that it was that time of year...

They had two large galvanized tanks full of baby chicks running all around!

Is it wrong that for a brief moment, I wanted to just get in there with them and lay down while they crawled all over me?  Ha!

They are so adorable, that's for sure.  

BABY DUCKS OF THE ECLIPSE

OK....so here is a farm story that got delayed after the events of Hurricane Harvey.  On Wednesday after the eclipse (and 3 days before the Harvey disaster), "J" from 2nd Family emailed me this photo.

SURPRISE!

She said that on the day of the eclipse... 

...one of their ducks came out from under the house...with eight little ducklings following along behind her!  They didn't realize she had laid eggs under there since she has randomly laid eggs around the property, and they were always unfertilized. She started to disappear for long periods of time, they thought she was flying up into a tree where she liked to roost.  Instead, she was apparently scooting in through some bushes at the back of the house and there, hidden from view (and safe), she did her thing and hatched these adorable babies.

A few days later she sent another couple of pictures.  Mom and babies are doing fine...

...though they are going to need a bigger pond, LOL!  

"J" said the ducklings LOVED the flooded yard for a few days, splashing around and swimming all over the place.  They were probably really confused when the water receded.  

They haven't decided what to do with them since they were not expecting eight new babies and aren't prepared for ten ducks roaming around. For now though, they are fine to stay there where 2nd Family can keep them covered and safe from airborne predators and they can enjoy the adorable cuteness of ducklings. If we were living out there full time, we might have become duck keepers.  2nd Man loves baking with duck eggs!  

They may end up keeping a couple of them and so we picked out two perfect names for them if they do:

SOL and LUNA...

A RABBIT COMES TO VISIT

Bunnies galore!

As I was mowing recently, they appeared randomly all over the property. Of course the mower scared them off before I could get a picture but as I was putting things up the last time, this little guy or gal stopped to check things out.  

I slowly grabbed the camera and snapped a few pictures. Thought I'd share!

"Hey there, I'm ready for my closeup!"

"Hey, wait, what's that over there?"

"Gotta go, bye, see ya later!"

We have also seen some baby bunnies around as well. We tend to think of Spring as the time for baby bunnies but I guess you can't stop a rabbit from, um, doing what rabbits do.  

Hope you enjoyed the bunny visit!