(This was written days ago, when I took the outside pics around our house)
Not that I was unaware that scary things were out there...in the woods, but I didn't realize just how close. I've been staying clear of the area in the woods where we know there are yellow jackets. Today I posted pictures of Aubrey playing on a wooden beam. The beam is up on the corner of a small hill. Aubrey had slid down the side of it, scraping away some of the dirt/moss on the side. Later this evening we were all outside enjoying the lovely weather. Jonah wanted me to take a picture of him on the same beam that Aubrey had his taken on earlier. Isabella came up to us and told me we needed to get away as there was a yellow jacket nest in the side of that hill. WHAT!?! Sure enough, not 30 seconds later a yellow jacket flies up to the hill and crawls in a small hole. YIKES!! To think that the baby was walking right on top of their hive and sliding down, right in front of the hive opening! Shudder.
This scary thing I have been aware of, just not sure where they all are. Besides the yellow jackets, we have been...um....blessed to have the return of the huge wasps/hornets. They may not be the same as those we had when we first moved in. Those things were extremely attracted to light. Big time!! This time I've seen a few come to our windows, but not like in the past. But now we have these huge things, maybe cicada killer wasps? that have taken up resident in one or two of our trees. Last week I tried to go down to our creek. We have a fence up now, so we have to scale the fence to get to the creek. However there is only one place to really get over and that happens to be right next to the wasp tree. These wasps are huge and scary. No creek time that time.
And then today. Today Moira and Saoirse went down to the creek. We have quite a few snakes around these parts. The most common being the black snake (rat snake). They have frequented our chicken barn. They will lay right under the chickens, waiting for an egg! Unreal. Last week we had a pretty green garter snake in our yard. Flannery got some really neat photos of it. But back to Moira and Saoirse. They spotted a snake in the creek. Upon further inspection it was a copper head!!! A first for us!! Yikes. I refused to let them down there until Jeremiah got home, but by then it had taken off. I guess we will be a lot more careful on our trips down to our creek. I made sure to look up copper head snake bites. Interesting. All snakes (well, at least those that were being tested) give off a warning. A rattle snake shakes it's tail. A cotton mouth opens it's mouth *wide*. And they figured out why a copper head is the biggest biter...it's warning is an initial bite, one that doesn't give off as much of it's toxin. The bites are supposed to be very painful though, not fun. Generally, though a trip to the ER would be encouraged, there isn't much to do with the bite but symptom relief.
I'm thinking we've had our fair share of ER visits and I don't relish
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