Roadrunners in my garden

There is nothing wrong with a spider or ants

The people next door to me lift up the slabs in their garden and pour toxic poison on the ants because they are small minded pathetic cretins,fair enough no one wants ants in the house but ants in the garden should not be a problem

man, if i find a spider in the bath i put it outside,i guess i have heart,courage and wisdom by the biucket load,this is the difference between me and other mortals

Then next time lose the stupid cow comment and perhaps you'll get more credibility.

Fire ants needs to die. Non poisonous spiders I let live. Poisonous ones I stomp flat.

I got into a fight with one once. It was trying to dig under the house. You may have experienced this before, but if you haven't I'll give a word of advice. DON'T stand behind them while they are shoveling. They toss dirt like an earthmover. I thought if I tap him on the butt with a baseball bat a couple of times he'd get the hint like possums and raccoons do and run off. NOPE! That was just a signal to DIG FASTER! The thrid time I must have gotten too close to him and he whipped around on me. The dog lit into him and I was trying to knock them both lose. It was a big scrap to have happen at 2 in the morning. It was a big joker too. Bigger than the biggest raccoon I've ever seen.

Found out later they can carry leprosy too. That didn't endear them to me.

Edit: And we NEVER use to have armadillos here. Our big "pesky varmints" for a goodly number of years were possums, squirrels and raccoons. Then all of a sudden..within 10 years I'd say...it became all about the "Armor plated possums". They have about taken over from other species.

Last Edited by Firefly on 06/08/2009 11:16 AM

Ewww! Those are nasty too.

The fact that you have spared these roadrunners ,is indeed,a small miracle. They are a unique bird and are worth saving.
Have they ever damaged your crops before ? Squash produce so much nothing really bothers them in my garden untill the seeds mature in old squash. I doubt these guys got any positive feedback from pecking the squash. They may be looking for seed or they were pecking damaging insects off of them. If it is seed they quest ,a sack of wild bird seed should help but that will bring in a huge assortment of critters . The scare crow sprinklers work off of a 9 volt battery and your H2O pressure.Iv'e used them to keep deer out of an area. Good luck and keep us posted.

leprosy??? Whoa that's bad.....next time I see one I won't get too close....

They didn't do any crop damage last year. Maybe they are afraid of my dog and won't approach the watering buckets I have out.

I know what I am gonna do, close the gate on the upper half of the property, put water buckets out, and my dog won't be able to patrol up there. She won't like it, but she has her own command post she can guard. ;>)

Very nasty. Brown recluse are no joke either. A guy I knew had a big scar on his leg. He always told people he got it when he was "rubbed" by a shark scuba diving in Florida. One night he admitted that this 8in scar on his calf had come from a brown recluse bite that killed the flesh before he got to the hospital. That got my attention.

Ah ain't never bin hassled by one o' them feathered varmints.

Got mah hands full with that long-eared galoot that keeps a-leavin' footieprints all over mah desert and makin' off with mah singin' sword. He even sunk mah sailin'-ship once.

Ornery varmint almost seems bullet-proof. Cain't believe ah keep a-missin' him. Even mah buddy Elmer cain't seem ta put him down with that scattergun of his.

LMAO. Moonshine much?

Hows it going brother?

Ants are trouble in a garden...they tend and care for aphids and protect them from insects that would eat them.

I have a small, shiny species that takes care of root aphids, as well as causes damage themselves. I always have to be on the lookout for a plant not doing well--chances are the stem below the surface is being attacked by them.

The larger, cosmopolitan Argentine ants, tend their colonies above ground.

Omega, there is a product that I am using on apples and am experimenting on cauliflower to keep aphids off of the heads:

[link to www.groworganic.com]

They are nylon 'footies' that slip over the fruit and expand to protect them as they grow. I bet they would make good roadrunner deterrents.

Last Edited by czygyny on 06/08/2009 11:23 AM

Thanks for the info and link that looks like a great organic gardening site!

Looks like you can tame them a bit. lol.

[link to www.aaanimalcontrol.com]

So you know I'm not blowing smoke. But its only about 5% of armadillos that have it (which in my state means that there are only about 800 billion infected...*laugh*) and 95% of people are immune...AND there is a very good cure for it.

BUT..IF you aren't immune, and IF you got a bad infected one AND society broke down so much that you couldn't get to a hospital with a cure...then it MIGHT be a problem.

Too bad for me actually...I had read that armadillos were a delicacy in Central America. But as Samuel L. Jackson said, "Sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie. But I'll never know cause I'll never eat the dirty muthafucka!"

My addendum: "..cause I'll never eat the dirty leprosy ridden dirt throwing clawing muthafucka".

Edit: Looking at some other sites, it looks like about 1 in 6 armadillos were infected with leprosy. And some people in Texas and Louisiana were infected.

Last Edited by Firefly on 06/08/2009 11:37 AM

Whoa!!! Actually that doesn't surprise me I have eased up within 10 feet of them before.


I wonder if they eat squirrels.....heh....

Ah yes, Squirrels...the rats with good PR.

THIS IS ANOTHER CHEAP OMEGA'S EXCUSE TO USE HIS RIFLE BECAUSE ZOOMBIES AREN'T COMING AND HE IS BORED TO DEAD !!

HERE IS OMEGA PREPARING HIS SHOOT AGAINST THOSE angry, atrocious, bad, baneful, base, beastly, calamitous, corrupt, damnable, depraved, destructive, disastrous, execrable, flagitious, foul, harmful, hateful, heinous, hideous, iniquitous, injurious, loathsome, low, maleficent, malevolent, malicious, malignant, nefarious, no good, obscene, offensive, pernicious, poison, rancorous, reprobate, repugnant, repulsive, revolting, spiteful, stinking, ugly, unpleasant, unpropitious, vicious, vile, villainous, wicked, wrathful, wrong ,DANGEROUS AND EVIL ROADRUNNERS !!

[link to lh4.ggpht.com]



KARMA CAN BE ....

Damn,that road runner was quick,soon as he had that mouse the road runner switched gears and was gone rapid fire

Put down the crackpipe assclown.

:assclnbgtm:

LOL. Yup they don't call em roadrunners for nuthin' they can haul ass when needed.

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Get them some coyotes!

There are some around here.....last I checked the State will give ya 25 bucks an ear.......


Never saw one have heard them plenty in the fall and winter.....

I've heard those stories too. Gives me the heebie jeebies seriously.

You may be interested to know that not everyone has that same reaction from a brown spider bite. In fact, if I understand correctly, those worst case scenarios are the minority. It's just that the damage done in those few cases is so horrific that the overall threat from this specie of spider is over-sensationalized.

The only problem I have with that is not knowing which side of the bite reaction I fall on. And I'm not in any hurry to find out.

Last Edited by Tully D on 06/08/2009 11:45 AM

Not yet, trying to get my hands on my great-uncle's recipe (may be lost to history) and lookin' at the link to commercial stills you provided a couple of weeks ago.

Doin' pretty well otherwise - my oldest just graduated from high school so I'm helpin' her find a job and get ready for college.

Man, I haven't seen a roadrunner since I lived in Abilene. We just don't have them in the DFW area. If we do, I've never seen them.

The coyotes that came here...some of them...interbred with dogs. So now we have what are called "Coy-dogs" (pronounced like "Toy dogs"..with a "C"). Those jokers seem to have kept the wildness, but have lost the solitude characteristic of coyotes. So these guys will roam in packs like dogs and wolves, which coyotes typically don't do.

Back when I deer hunted, on two different occasions, I saw packs of 10 to 20 individuals of these mixed breeds (could have been the same pack at different times). I know of at least one fellow who stayed in his stand until people came to look for him because he was worried about climbing down when they got too close to him.

Everybody relax ! : He said he is NOT going to shoot something. ....

Oh yeah. And the same can be said for bee stings or ant bites. Some people are far more sensitive to reactions than other people. I've been bitten by bees and ants so I know I don't have a huge allergic reaction. But, like you, I don't know how I would fair on the poisonous spider bite reactive scale. It's the not knowing that causes worry.

Hey congrats on your oldest!!!! Woot woot!

Avian on this board bought the self contained electric still for 200 bucks. Plug and play, add the stuff turn it on and walk away. He's run one batch I am aware of and was really satisfied with the end product.

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