What interesting creatures live in your garden?

[bobm]

Several months ago, I amended the soil with compost and peat moss in preparation to planting blueberry bushes along my installed dry creek bank. The blueberry bushes are growing in leaps and bounds ... then a local feral cat started to invade this area from across the road 20 acre woods and the ditchbank cottonwoods behind our back fence. This cat then sent out the come see and poop here meeeaaw to all it's friends, in laws, outlaws and relatives so now I have a horde of them using this area as a potty box. With all of these feral cats around , one would think that at least one of them would pounce on and devour the resident mole pests ? Well ... N O !!! Just hissing , yowls, cat fights and smelly cat poop galore at 3:00 AM. Anyone know of a keep out sign painter or ???

 

[baymule]

@bobm I feel your pain. Get a big dog that hates cats. I have a Great Pyrenees in the backyard and she goes bonkers when one passes through any of the neighbors yards. Cats know to stay out of the back yard and any that do come in, don't leave. Unfortunately, she can't be let loose to roam the entire neighborhood......

The lady next door feeds all the feral cats. Like any animal receiving proper nutrition and plenty of it, they breed like rats. They crap in my garden, pee on the corner of the house (our bedroom-phew!) and pee on the porch. I hate them. I can't do anything about it because that is animal cruelty. Or I would shoot every darn one of them. I have a large black Lab/Great Dane mix that I take in the front yard. Sometimes he finds a nest of kittens in the yard of the empty house on the other side of us and he kills them. I sure don't call him off either.

Oh, and yes they scream all night under the bedroom window and incite the dogs to a barking frenzy. Just once I would like to let my Great Pyrenees loose on them.

For the cat lovers out there, it's not that I don't like cats, I do like them and have had cats. But any animal allowed to be a nuisance to the entire neighborhood is just that, a nuisance, no matter what kind of animal it is.

No, I'm not going to complain to the city authorities. No, I'm not going to complain to the SPCA. The neighbor lady is old and thinks she is being kind. Besides, we're moving. It won't be my problem anymore. I'm going to fence our new place so the dogs can roam the whole property. Anything on our place will be fair game.

 

[sumi]

@Carol Dee That is so cute! Thanks for sharing.

@thistlebloom that's a sweet image!

@baymule we had a stray hanging around at our previous house. Talk about nuisance? First he'd impregnate every female in our house on a regular basis (unfortunately they were our friends' cats and our friends never learned the definition of the word "spay"). Once that's taken care off he'd fight with the ancient tom, chase off the younger toms, usually in the middle of the night. The dogs got hold of him a few times, but that didn't scare it off.

 

[bobm]

To stop the FOUL cat poop odor and cat YOWLING / FIGHTING at night ... Our next door neighbor has 3 house dogs. I borrowed them for night guard duty . The cats then sit on the back fence making those mutts go bonkers and after 2 nights of this the neighbor took them back to live inside their house again ( house dogs) to stop the barking noise. FOUL ODORS, YOWLING AND FIGHTING return. So, I then borrowed our grandkids' dog ( 15 lb. mutt ) while they whent on vacation for a week, turns out the first night, she barks at the cats and I get turned in to spca by another neighbor. I got threatened to be prosecuted for disturbing the peace and animal cruelty. Let's just say that I want to give those spca s. o.b.'s a salt butt whupping with my shotgun or to invite them to a neck tie party. .........also I want to invite this neighbor to a midnight candlelight gourmet feline excrement dinner served with a serenade by a dozen felines.

 

[journey11]

@bobm , I have a lot of trouble with my 3 cats getting into my raised beds. Only thing I've found that works is to put down wire as a barrier (so they can't scratch). I use chicken wire or welded wire, whatever I have on hand. I keep several small sections just for that purpose, so I can move them around as plants grow or beds are empty. You could put down chicken wire around your blueberries and just leave it. I'd add just a little more mulch on top so you won't see the wire.

 

[canesisters]

Probably not actually helpful - depending on power/water sources ... but a friend had great success keeping the 'neighborhood' cat colony out of her yard at night using motion detection security lights and sprinklers. The lights - set down low - come on when the cats come over the fence. Then the motion detection sprinklers (sold as deer deterants) can 'spot' them and come on, watering down the whole yard. She said that it took about a week and then she stopped seeing the lights come on anymore.

 

[Smart Red]

I have a fool proof solution to cats in potted plants. I suspect it would work in gardens as well.
One word.

Chinese chestnut pods.

Okay, so it is three words, but one kind of thing

Hum-m-m. There is a small yellow plane flying, dipping, and dodging in the field across the road. I wonder if someone is spraying? or playing?

I collect and use the spiny shells of the chestnuts to deter cats from using pots as a potty. They could be scattered around any plant you don't want animals digging around. Just be sure you don't touch the shells -- or worse -- step on them barefooted. Cats, chickens, chipmunks, so far none have dared the dreaded spines.

 

[Smart Red]

Oh well, the wind is nil and there are two tree breaks between my property and the field. Much further to my veggie. It is as good a day as any for chemical guys to spray.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Today while checking on my plants I saw a praying mantis in my adzukis (I did take a photo, but Snapfish is being difficult with my phone again, so it will have to wait) Presumably a juvenile (it didn't appear to have wings yet) Don't know which species it was. We have two here usually, the big green/brown/mixed ones that are maybe 5-6 inches long and the smaller hyperactive ones that are 3 or so (though the latter may simply be males of the former) The juvenile was small enough to be the latter, but had yellowish orangeish eyes (the smaller ones usually have brown or black eyes, even if they are all green. The big ones often have pale eyes) And as it was resting I didn't want to disturb it to see if it had the other differing mark (the smaller kind around here has a yellow and black "eye" design on the inner side of both of the scythes; the bigger one's don't.)

And this morning we had a BIG woodpecker in the tree outside the sunroom window, We have a lot of woodpeckers, but most are the little kind with the rounded heads, where it's only the red patch on the top of their heads that makes them really differentiable from the nuthatches. This one was one of the larger ones with the long neck and the full crest.

 

[seedcorn]

Red, probably spraying a fungicide to kill diseases.