Snakes? No problem. Beetles? Easy peasy. Cockroaches? I now feed them to my chickens. Worms? Na, I bait my own hook. Spiders? Um. Great big yellow and black garden spiders? Even though they are non-aggressive? Heebie Jeebies. So getting close enough to this guy to take a picture with my phone was a personal act of bravery. Taking down her web by disconnecting the anchor lines and leaving her one line (as far away from me as possible) to retreat was cold steel. But see, I had to get to the other side of her web to put the roosts back up in the chicken run. It was for my chickens. And I’ve learned this technique for dismantling spider webs the hard way; I really, really hate walking through spider webs. Gack. We have so many, many spiders this summer. I have to keep telling myself that yes, there are a ton of spiders, but there don’t seem to be many flies. So the spiders stay, even if I have to pull up my big girl pants and deal with the gentle yellow and black nightmare.

I trimmed most of the property (OK, the front of the property, the back is still wild). I cut down the spent wild flowers and trimmed around the yard and coop, went through a tank of fuel, and spent about 2 hours outside. I didn’t get pictures of all the critters (I’d still be out there), but did get some!