Seventeen golfballs, jumping spiders, nectar suckers

It's been a week at the little house in the woods (no connotations with the book). We've walked from front to back, crawled around in closed spaces, looked down when we should have looked up, and observed nature enjoying our flowers.

Seventeen golf balls. In a recent poll, I asked how many golf balls we'd find in our front yard within the first month. Apparently the former owner used to stand in his front yard/driveway and chip balls into the woods towards the road. I can only imagine being a driver coming up past the house and WHAM - you take a Top-Flite to the windshield. Any such activities in the future and I'll take a note from my neighbor - - hit towards the BACK woods.

Jumping spiders. So a few days prior, I was showing my workmates the photo of the wolf spider covered in babies (see previous post). She commented that in a former out-of-state residence, she learned how to kill Black Widow spiders - - freeze them with aerosol hair spray, than WHACK them with a flyswatter. Why? Because apparently these spiders like to jump to catch their prey, or as a defense mechanism.

Good to know.

Two days later, I'm looking inside a storage shed and there it is - - a Black Widow spider. Big one, with the unmistakable large abdomen and red hourglass marking. So in order to let the guys see a Black Widow up close (so they can identify it on sight), I try to catch it in a baby food jar. So I'm maneuvering near the spider, trying to figure out the best approach to trap it, when BOING, up jumps the spider from a standing start, about 12 inches straight up. Suffice to say, the spider got in the jar, I didn't get bitten, and the boys now know what a real Black Widow spider looks like.

Fast forward to the weekend, and Big Red and I are getting ready to go into the downstairs tool room to get some rope. As I've learned, I'm scanning the ground, scanning the bricks, scanning the house exterior looking for snakes. All clear, open the door, go in. Big Red says "Uh Dad, snake". Where? "Up there." And up above the door jamb, in the space between the jamb and the framing is the unmistakable coils of a black snake. Long story short, I "coaxed" the snake down with two dowel rods (think chopsticks/scissors) and then "transported" it in an aerial fashion about 10 feet into the woods. And I pick up another place to look for lurking snakes.

So let's end on a nice note. Sunday afternoon and the butterflies and bees are out in the front flowerbed, spending the afternoon perched on the flowers. The pictures speak for themselves.