Our World......

[Glider]

No, actually I have a cat.  I got the cat because
1. I like cats, and
2. I feed birds too, which as you said draw rodents
3. rodents draw weasels, and cats
4. weasels and stray cats tend to eat my birds.

So I've got a cat.  He seems to like the birds, but over time we've manage to reach a mutual respect on that point.  He doesn't eat my birds, and I don't eat him.

He does seem to do pretty decent on the small rodents.  However no, he doesn't seem to have much of an interest in rabbits.  A shame really.  If I could just convince the rabbits to sprout feathers, he'd probably be right on that....

-G-

[laughingwillow]

The cats we take in are usually stray and used to fending for themselves. Most have wandered onto our preserve and we end up taking them in over time. Rabbits are considered big game by two of our females. And mommy cat likes to pick off a nest, one baby bunny at a time, night after night, like her own drive through.

I don't like our cats killing birds, so when its time for the robbins to fledge and leave the nest, I usually start keeping the cats in during the day and only letting them out at night to prowl when the birds are roosting and the rodents come out.

Not many weasels around here. I did come across a mink caught in a trap a few years back while hunting pheasants along a creek. ANd yes, I did end up springing that mink from that trap. By hand (and foot) I managed to release the tension on the spring while keeping the minks' head out of biting range with the butt of my gun. He seemed happy to be let go, but prolly just stumbled into another trap further down stream, for all I know.

lw

[Amomynous]

The cats we take in are usually stray and used to fending for themselves. Most have wandered onto our preserve and we end up taking them in over time. Rabbits are considered big game by two of our females. And mommy cat likes to pick off a nest, one baby bunny at a time, night after night, like her own drive through.

I have a brace of hounds, and they (especially the younger) are the sweetest, kindest, animals you're likely to run into. But they're hounds, and they like killing.

Many years ago my family and I lived on a "farmette," and we had a lot of wildlife about. One spring day we hosted a birthday party for my son, and the property was crawling with toddlers.

My sweet little hound found a rabbit nest and achieved self-actualization. Rolling around on the groomed, tossing their little lifeless bodies into the air, It was an orgy of death, and I've never seen her so happy. It was hound nirvana.

The image of a herd of toddlers running around yelling "Broken bunnies! Broken bunnies!" is indelibly etched in my memory.

[JRL]

Ouch!  We had a pit/dal that killed bunnies, squirrels and cats. Chased a cat right though my cactus collection. She would get our sheperd mix all riles up and they would do the dog pack thing. When we put her down, Chester never killed again.

[Glider]

Broken... bunnies....  Wow, what a day.

Mink are reasonably intelligent, or so believeth I from when I tried to trap them.  Having been through the capture, and the close personal contact with a human, that mink probably experienced explosive gastrointestinal events for the remainder of its life every time it smelled steel, rust, human, and whatever the trapper was using as a lure.  If the trapper used a muskrat gland lure, many muskrats lived to tell of their close call with the paranoid, psychosis driven mink.  Hopefully that taught the trapper to use a kill set.  

Thinking about those hounds, maybe that is part of the issue.  My little beagle wasn't getting around quite so well last year, and she passed away earlier this year.  That might have more to do with the onslaught of rabbits this year than I was giving credit for.

[eccentro]

When I was a kid I was playing in the yard and my dad found a nest of baby bunnies with the lawnmower...that wasn't pretty.

[Glider]

So many broken bunnies....  In farm country occasionally a fawn is caught in a hay mower.  We call that veal.....

I liked this thread better when we were talking about landscapes, quiet country roads, and trees.

Flowering quince is mostly faded away here now.  The forsythia have all dropped their yellow and are once again actively growing.   Speaking of quince, anyone ever grow it?  Eat it?  Propagate it?

How about silverberry (Elaeagnus)?  It is just coming into flower here.  Smells nice, tasty berries, crying shame it is listed as a noxious invasive from Asia. http://www.prairiestateoutdoors.com/ind ... s/2009/10/

The plant isn't illegal in this state, and I've left several large shrubs growing just because I like to eat the berries in the fall.

There is a crab apple flowering today as well.  Beautiful pink blooms, sprouted up in the middle of a Christmas tree field, so I imagine it is a nature's original hybrid.  It gets those inch diameter sized crab apples on it, so of course I'm always tempted to nibble on them in the fall.  Unfortunately this particular one must have a double dose of Granny in it, because it goes right from powerful green pucker to rotting on the branch, without ever making a stop in tasty land.  I gotta get me a nice mate for it that is friendlier in the fruit.

Honey suckles are starting to crack blooms right now as well.  I can never quite distinguish the different asian invaders, but I'm pretty sure most of these around here are either Lonicera maackii or L. tatarica.  I used to think they were L. japonica.  But then I discovered L. japonica has a black fruit, and these are typically red, occasionally orange.  Oh, and japonica is a vine, these are shrubs.  The flowers look similar though!  (Anyone wanna trade / sell me some Lonicera caerulea?)

Take care,
-G-

[eccentro]

I agree with G. I guess you could say we were 'chasing rabbits' as my old college professor used to put it. I'll get back on track.

[Glider]

Hahaha!  Chasing rabbits is very different from catching rabbits.

Make no mistake about it, rabbit is good food!

The process of changing a living rabbit into stew meat is the only negative to the meal.  Perhaps that is why fruit bearing / medicinal bearing plants are so much fun.  Generally one can harvest without the death of the plant.  

-G-

[Amomynous]

The locust are in bloom now. Pretty, and smell nice, although they make some folks miserable.

[laughingwillow]

glider: It sounds like you folks are a couple of weeks behind us as far as growing season goes this year. Its been an early start for us. However, there are frost warnings for part of the state tonight and tomorrow, so I'm glad I dug all the holes for our tomatoes and prepped the soil in the last couple of weeks, but held off from planting.

lw

[Glider]

Definitely no locust in bloom here.  Various asian honey suckles are coming on strong though.  Strawberries are blooming pretty good though, and the lilacs are starting to taper off.

Temperatures lately have been in the mid 20's at night.

[judih]

hey glider - about quince - yeah. We once rented a house, set back from a main city street, filled with fruit trees. We had lush guava, persimmons, chinese apples (an apple looking persimmon) and quince. Quince are usually an ingredient people cook up as a compost. Very firm and hang on to their taste. We used to just pick em and chomp on them.

Around here, negev desert, the pecan tree has just shed a million little seed pods, the lilacs are in bloom. The lush flowering weeds are dying - thistle heads are bent, and the chamomile is only slightly still fragrant.

We had 100 degrees yesterday and a sandstorm, then suddenly the weather broke in the evening down to about 80 degrees. I expect we've seen the last of the rain till next November or so, but we sometimes get surprises.

Fields are blooming with some squash, green onion, corn.  Carrots were just harvested.

And the songbirds are lively right now, early morning.

have a great day/night y'all.

[laughingwillow]

Thanks to everyone for posting about the current conditions in your neck of the woods.

glider: Is it really that cold at night still? We've had our first frost warnings in a couple of months last night/tonight. Otherwise we've been at least up in the 40's the whole month of April.

judih: No more rain until fall, eh? That's crazy.

Prairie plants are coming up and looking healthy. I found some wild strawberries ripening in a clearing the other day. Last season, the patch had already finished fruiting by the time I discovered it. (the end of May) So I've found wild strawberries and ground cherries on the same hillside.

I myco'ed a few tomato holes on Sunday and then we received over an inch of rain on Monday......

lw

[Glider]

Last three nights it has gotten down into the 20's.  Nice heavy frost in the morning.  The sumacs all got knocked back a good one.  They put their foliage out relatively early, and a couple heavy frosts in a row costs them the tender new growth.  Same thing happened to an ash tree or two.

Tonight they are calling for a low in around 42 F.  Today it isn't more than 45, and pouring rain.  Unlike judih, we are going to see a lot of rain for the foreseeable future.  I started deadheading some of the lilacs yesterday, there just isn't any bloom left on some of the plants.  I have some small shrubs just started, which is the only reason I'm willing to pick off flower heads.  Once they get up above my head and dozens of blooms a piece, I don't bother.  Last frost around here is still some weeks away.

Kind of up in the hills, and away from any large body of water, the days get warm, but the nights are still chilly.  We've had weather well into the 70s already.  It just doesn't always hold there well through the night.