Insect Season

Well the insects are officially back in full force and because i dont free range my chickens its my responsibility to collect them all so my chickens can have some good protein. Every time its moist i collect them cup fulls of pill bugs. At night i collect the june bugs attracted to the porch …

The Dung Beetles are back

I kept trying to examine Sili and Cashew’s turds while they were sick so i could gage what state of recovery they were in and the turds were just disappearing…all of them. it appeared that the dogs were going days without pooping. I knew this was not the case for what goes in must come …

Flight of the Junebugs

Every spring there comes a time when the june bugs wake up from their winter hibernation and arise by the thousands from a single patch of brush behind the house right at dusk. They do this nightly until they mate, die off, and make way for the next generation which emerge in the form of …

The Ant Colony Living in my Car

It happened after a huge rain storm. It was 3:30 in the morning when i got in the car to go to work. It was dark and i was barely awake. I would not have seen the vast amount of movement when i opened the door to throw my bags and jacket in. Similarly, it …

Cicada

I had been known to fry grasshopper occasionally when i wasn’t feeding it to the chickens. I usually had to smash the grasshoppers to catch them but if it seemed especially intact or i managed to catch it alive i would save it for human consumption via the skillet. The grocery shortage of 2020 had …

Snacks for the Chickens

At the tractor supply store there were these food logs. They often had mealworms or crickets in them along with seeds and other dried veggies. You could buy bags of dried dead insects for your chickens to eat. I didn’t see the point in this when the live ones were all over my property. I …

Killing Rasputin

It would be 3 days before i got my shot at Rasputin. After chasing Charlotte off she had sat in her web for days, taking advantage of the spider’s system and beheading anything that became ensnared in the webbing. I had looked for her, hungry for vengeance for my poor friend and eager to protect …

Charlotte Goes Missing

I had noticed a praying mantis hanging around on the underside of the porch roof. It was there for a couple days and each time i noticed it the thing was closer to charlotte’s web than it had been before. I didn’t think much of it until Charlotte went missing. When i last saw her …