Well hello there little guy. I don’t suppose I will have occasion to get a picture from this angle very often, so I’m going to snap a shot, OK? Then I’m giving you warning that I’m opening the door to let the dogs out. Don’t run towards the door jam, it is squished death for spiders and geckos, but I promise I will check before I close the door since you were so kind as to let me capture your image this morning. Nice eyelashes, by the way. Very chic.

I was working in the garage when what I thought was a yellow jacket darted in front of me. My first move was to step calmly from the garage to let the insect get out, but it didn’t get out. It hovered midair, turning to keep its eyes locked on me. Hm. That is not yellow jacket behavior. So I circled it, and watched it pivot to continue to face me, round and round. My phone camera wouldn’t focus on the (relatively) small body, and I wasn’t moving closer without ID. It finally ran out of energy and settled down briefly. iNaturalist told me it was a Giant Flower Fly, and another user further classified it as a Virginia Giant. It uses its coloration to capitalize on the fear inspired by yellow jackets. It also does quite an effective job at intimidation with the bold stare and mid-flight menace. Eventually it left the area; I can assure you that there are no delectable flowers in the garage, so it was best that it moved on. But at least I don’t have to search the garage for a nest.

We have one delivery person who puts our packages on the ground inside our fence rather than on our front porch. My youngest picked up the package and we saw that it had a passenger; a very irate passenger that did not at all like having its picture taken. Since no one was willing to open the package with its tiny defender, I took it and offered escape. The preying mantis was very willing and eager to leave the package and walk back to the fence. Much different than the beetles and geckos we release only to find they don’t want to leave the stick or hand.

I put our trail cam back down in the woods in a dry stream bed… awhile ago. Life’s been busy and I hadn’t checked it in nearly a month. Hm. There were over 300 pictures. Yes, mostly of cats, raccoons, armadillo, and opossum, but there were also fox and coyote! The coyote picture was pretty blurry except for the long legs, but I had the best fox picture so far.

There was also a sequence of shots of one of the neighborhood cats trying to get a rodent (I’m assuming it was a rat). We didn’t get the outcome of the standoff, but the rat holds its own for several minutes.

Last spring I put out netting over my sky chair to keep the flies and mosquitoes off as I sat. This fall I noticed it was all in a tangle, then I saw the squirrel bunching the fabric up and trying to haul it off. It might feel nice and soft, but I don’t think nylon netting is a good nesting material!

I gathered up all the artificial netting and put out tuffs of alpaca fleece as a natural substitute. This seems to meet the inspector’s approval, because I saw a squirrel pulling apart the fibers and gathering bits. That critter is going to have a soft cozy winter bed!