Grab my coat - I'm moving back to the city.

WARNING ....
icky bug photo ahead.


So, living out here in the country has been an adventure to say the least. I have said before that it's not so much as fixing up your house, but more like defending the homestead.

One thing I've noticed is these little holes all over the place. Now, I can't be sure, but I think they might be snake holes. I'm pretty cool with that because snakes eat mice and voles... living literally in the middle of a bean field, that's a given.

Between the house and the chicken coop, there's one of these holes and it looks pretty fresh. As I'm walking by, I'm looking at it, and I see something move. On closer inspection (yes I'm a weirdo like that), I find this guy:

{this was an incredibly hard shot to get btw!!}

and I wonder, is it a spider hole? Or a spider that shares residence with snakes, which I think would be a really bad move on his part in my opinion. He was huge. When I say "huge" pretty much any spider over the size of a fingernail is huge to me. They are bigger when they are inside. This guy however, had to be a good couple inches across including legs. Maybe bigger, I dunno I wasn't stupid enough to jam my finger down in that hole. Mainly because every single spider I see I wonder "is that a brown recluse??!!"

That's a lie.

I only think that on the brown ones. Most of them are brown by the way.


In other news, I went out to get the mail yesterday.
Exciting stuff no?

On the way back, the chickens were all in the undesignated area. It's pretty hard to keep them in their "designated area" and remember where that's at when chickens have the memory of well... a chicken.

What I'm saying is the stupid chickens were in the driveway, mere feet from my fledgling flower bed. bad news. I shooed them back to their spot, and something else caught my eye.... movement. I looked again, and there, running in a perfect, tight circle, about the size of a donut, was a VOLE. A big fat one too.

The chickens had found him (her????) first and was checking it out, and I had shooed them away. sigh.

The vole was obviously confused. Maybe it had taken a good hard peck to the noggin, because even tho I was 5,000 times it's size, and towering over it like the jolly green giant, it continued to run in some weird tight circle.

Did I mention I can't kill anything with a face?
I can't.
I'm a softie.
Sue me.

I gathered up a big tub and sat it on top of it, thinking Gene could squish it when he got home.

Stupid move.

When I went out an hour later, it was gone. Sigh. Probably off to produce it's 9th litter of 273 babies this year. BLECH.

I think I wanna move. Or someone to hold me. Where's my mommy?