Not sure which I hate more, chipmunk or squirrel. In either case they wreak havoc on my bulbs.

I really hate squirrels The little monsters have figured out how to open the lid of the Squirrel Proof feeder
I did not have any chipmunk or mice problems with our black snakes BUT , now that they were scared away by the
king snake I have both . I don't mind one chippy Seamus likes them and they planted a nice bunch of sunflowers for
us this year LOL .. But , now we are looking for a outside cat or two I was hoping one would just show up unfortunately
none did
So we will adopt a couple barn cats this winter or spring and Seamus will have a couple new pets

So jealous...how big was the bat?

Bat!! I thought it was...well....some kind of 4 legged creature but a bat never entered my mind. We have tons flying around at night.

Shannon, I also have little sympathy for squirrels.

Great pictures Springgreenthumb! We have bats around too but I haven't seen where they roost. Used to be a couple old barns nearby, but those are gone.

The bat is called Brown Myotislucifugus.
It is about the size of a tiny kitten. This particular breed is cute to look at. The bricks on the brick wall are standard brick veneer size brick. Bats eat their own body weight in mosquitos every night.
Bats are not blind as once thought.

And they purr like cats, just softer.

bats!!!

greenthumb99 said:And they purr like cats, just softer.

So do raccoons but they purr twice as loud as cats. Feels like a vibrator. 😀

The past couple of days I have been reworking the hundreds of pots of plants I have, and sorting the piles of empty black landscape pots that have accumulated. Black WIdow spiders love to hang out in black containers and I encountered many. I am usually pretty blase about most creatures, including these, but 3 times in one hour I found a small one crawling up my bare leg (shorts) and it really made me wary.

eek! We have found quite a few in the several years after the old barns behind us were torn down and new construction going up. I haven' t found any this year. They do seem to love black items and hot places. I have found them in a plastic pot at least once, one that sat tossed out in the garden.

On a less traumatic, but more dramatic note, I was sitting 3 or 4 feet from a large, black & yellow garden spider and its web. I happened to glance over just at the instant that a fly hit the web. The spider ran over to it, and spinning it like a beach ball with its many legs, encased it in white silk in mere seconds. Couldn't believe how abruptly the fly changed color.

Fascinating! I wish we got those argiopes more often here.

They're so distinctive, colorful, and large, the first spider I learned to ID as a small child.

Black Widows while poisonous are not aggressive like the recluse and other poisonous spiders.

In case study tests the scientists had to severely provoke the Black a Widow to get it to bite after placing it on a human.

I was bitten on my leg by a black widow when I was 11 years old. I did not know I had been bitten at first; because it seemed like any other spider bite at first but rapidly became hard, painful, and difficult to walk on in just a couple of days My mother took me to the Hospital where they identified the bite then just sent me home instructing me to hot and cold pack it in cider vinegar repeatedly for 48 hours until the bite began to dissipate. I was good as new within a week.

I realize that Black Widows are not aggressive, and have had them on me on other occasions. What concerned me was repeatedly finding them crawling on my legs because I brush off ants and other small critters without paying much attention, which creates a higher risk of being bitten. I was bitten by a brown recluse on my shoulder when I lived in the Midwest. The deltoid muscle hurt like having had a shot, ached, and was stiff for weeks. A black dot of necrotic tissue developed at the site of the bite and became a hole about 1/4 inch deep.

Yikes, you guys!