susieq

Greetings all,
I do understand irrational fear of certain things, totally not based on logic....
I am a true arachniphobic (sp?) Absolutely out of my mind afraid of spiders. Makes no sense at all and as a child I used to play with them. When we moved to Florida I was 14. The spiders we have here are enormous and varied. I had a real scarey experience with a variety known around here as the banana spider (bigger than my hand, honest to God) I never got over it and that was over 35 years ago. So I understand irrational fears.

I have always played with the local fauna...snakes, lizards, frogs, toads, you name it, I had it for a pet at sometime, if only to show my children for a few days and then turn it loose. Trying to keep the kiddies from being afraid of little hoppy things.

We live near a small swamp that used to be home to wild otters, is still home to aligator snapping turtles (the badest of the bad) , egrets, osprey and now a pair of bald eagles that have discovered the cell tower on the neighbor's property. The summer nights fairly roar with the sound of tree frogs. And we get the odd snake in our yards from time to time. Right after we built the house and moved in, we found a pretty large coral snake in the garage. 45 inches long. Having lived out west for a time, I was shocked to see how large corals got here in Florida. But this subspecies gets much larger than their western cousin. The record is 47 inches the last time I checked.

We ran into a few pygmie rattlers here and there but that was long ago. As I said earlier, haven't seen a poisonous snake here in ten years or more.

As for the bonsai we have here, Bob, lots of the local club members keep bald cypress. I don't have any personally but they are a local tree and very popular, along with buttonwoods. Tropicals in general are pretty popular here. I read with interest about all the folks around the country having a hard time keeping fukien tea trees.....no problems here. Mine constantly drop berries that sprout new plants and I have gotten so that I just pull them out of the pot along with other weeds. Black olives do well here also, and malpigghias. Then there are the run of the mill elms, junipers, maples etc...

As for the squirrels, Tom, we are over run with them at times because we live in the remains of a 125 year old pecan grove and still have a few of the old trees on the property. I show sqirrels no mercy if they bother my trees. As I have said in other threads, I just shoot them and bury them.....but only while the damage to the trees persists. If they leave my stuff alone, I leave them alone. I have a German airgun and the neighbors are ok with my thinning them out a bit if needed. For those who cannot do this in their neighborhoods, may I suggest a rat trap baited with peanut butter. Quiet and the neighbors are none the wiser. We also have roving bands of racoons who are very brazen in their behavior. Years ago a well meaning lady on our street used to feed them all her leftovers. Bad move. Almost as bad as feeding the gators....another pet peeve but moving right along.....the coons do venture into the yard at night because our boxer is a house dog although he has treed them a couple of times. Once in a while they get onto the bonsai shelves and knock something over. No damage so far.

Red Pine, all I can say after reading the links, is becareful! Not the kind of snake I would want to see in my back yard.

We have the black snakes, garters, coach whips, indigos, red rat snake, hognosed (those are fun) and when it rains, the burrowing varieties surface to breath, like the little eastern ringnecks(soft black with a red ring around the neck), and the worm snakes, that look for all the world like an oversized nightcrawler...... pink and ribbed and some are over a foot long. Yep, just a reptilian disney world here...... To say nothing of the geckos and other lizards. Watching all this going on around me, it is a wonder I ever get anything done. Which reminds me, time to get back to work. Cheers.
susieq