It’s been an interesting week or so here at Casa de Fire Ant, thanks to the endless parade of wildlife traipsing past our abode, occasionally stopping to destroy our lawn on their way to whatever other endeavors attract them. Last week, we went out of town for a couple of days but I left my… Continue reading The Mystery of the Murdered Fawn
Category: Texas Hill Country
Channeling the Wily Armadillo
Note: The following contains critical armadillo trapping advice. Ignore it at your own peril. You’ve been warned. There’s also a walking stick gif. Alert Gazette readers will recall the account of my armadillo trapping woes, wherein the creatures were zooming in and out of the malfunctioning trap as if it were a port-a-potty next to… Continue reading Channeling the Wily Armadillo
Random Thursday: The Tuesday Edition
It’s been awhile since we’ve published a Random Thursday article [Ed–After reviewing this, it’s obvious that it hasn’t been long enough.] Trapping Fails Following a very quiet winter and early spring in which I actually contemplated the notion that I had trapped out the nuisance wildlife population in our immediate neighborhood. Lately, however, our game… Continue reading Random Thursday: The Tuesday Edition
Tough Love in Birdland
Alert Gazette readers will recall this account of suspected predation of a nearby bird nest by a rat snake. As devastating as it surely was, the parents refused to be discouraged, went right back to work, and hatched another brood of birdlets (black phoebes, to be precise). To date, the new batch of nestlings has… Continue reading Tough Love in Birdland
Snake Karma
Late last month we were confronted with the sad sight of three nestlings that had apparently fallen from their nest attached to a stone column about ten feet above our back porch. Two of the baby birds were already deceased and the third would soon be. There was no sign of a disturbance in the… Continue reading Snake Karma
Fortitude at Altitude (or, “You think your job is hard?”)
A week or so ago, I was returning home in the truck when I spotted a helicopter hovering at what I guessed to be about a half mile from our house. There was a long line suspended from the bottom of the aircraft with something attached to the end. As I turned onto the road… Continue reading Fortitude at Altitude (or, “You think your job is hard?”)
Flower Flyover
The bluebonnet crop around our little town of Horseshoe Bay is absolutely phenomenal this year. Most of the long-timers here say it’s the best showing in at least a decade. It’s probably due to the record-breaking rainfall we experienced last fall, plus a relatively warm winter. I’ve now learned that the “warm winter” is actually… Continue reading Flower Flyover
Five Tips for Amateur Trappers in the Texas Hill Country
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of discussion on various local social media about folks who are having issues with critters tearing up their lawns and/or living where they shouldn’t be living (e.g. skunks declaring a homestead under a back yard deck). These discussions often contain a lot of good advice, as well as some that’s… Continue reading Five Tips for Amateur Trappers in the Texas Hill Country
There’s never an ophiologist around when you need one
Alert Gazette readers will recall our encounter with a cottonmouth (aka water moccasin) last fall. Then, a couple of months ago we discovered a four-foot-long blotched water snake [Update: which I now know is more correctly known as a plain-bellied water snake] in our courtyard. The latter encounter taught me that distinguishing between the poisonous… Continue reading There’s never an ophiologist around when you need one
Web Weaving Weirdos
I’ll fight a bear, but I don’t like spiders. I’m not a fan of those. — J. J. Watt I’m an unabashed arachnophobe. Spiders are not just creepy; they’re intentionally malevolent. God created spiders because snakes weren’t sufficient to remind us that we live in a fallen world. Spiders are the only creatures that… Continue reading Web Weaving Weirdos