Wildlife

Every spring and summer, I am reminded why we originally decided to title this blog "Wildlife and Home". For a typical suburban area (with almost half a dozen kids in the yard, no less), we have a surprising amount of critters in our yard. I consider it God's kindness to allow us an up-close and personal look at His creation.
In previous years, we've had monstrous wolf spiders and mice in the shed, a box turtle that inexplicably made it's way through the fence for a week before disappearing again, frogs in the flower pots (and the house), robins' and wrens' nests, and fearless little hummingbirds. This year, we've discovered something new:

 This would be our newest shed tenant, a black snake. Photos aren't great, but my point is made: a snake lives in our shed! I can confidently say he/she lives there because he/she's been evicted twice, and twice has he/she made his/her return. I don't mind this new tenant - it's pretty harmless unless you're smaller that it and Toby's convinced it'll keep the mice down. Last year, he was convinced the mice kept the spiders down. Perhaps each year we'll have a progressively larger visitor that eats last year's visitors. That would make next year either a bird of prey or a mongoose. I'd rather not think about that.

Clearly, we still have spider issues...

I'd love to have some name recommendations for "our" snake - referring to "it" or "shim" is getting tiresome. We have taken to calling the spider "Shelob", for what it's worth...:)