A Miscreant Revealed

This is the time of year when critters traditionally try to come inside from the garden to avoid the winter weather, even though San Diego's winters are really pretty mild.

So I wasn't too surprised the other night to see our two youngest cats stalking a spider that had made it into the house downstairs and was scurrying across the rug.  Knowing Bailey and Jenna, I felt the spider's life expectancy was measured in minutes, if not seconds, so I quickly grabbed a cup, scooped it up and deported the spider to the outdoors.  The kittens kept up the watch for a while, but the spider apparently realized it was flirting with danger and didn't reappear.

Draft Blocker, AKA Cat Toy.  Isn't He Cute?

Later, while I was watching TV, I heard a strange, creepy slithering noise behind me.  Thinking that a sizeable snake had also managed to get into the house, I jumped up and found that it was our senior male cat, Chutzpaw, dragging a draft blocker across the floor.  Cindy's Mom gave me this years ago to stop the drafts that chill my downstairs office.  Naturally, the cats think this is just another big kitty toy.  Every day, I put this draft blocker in front of one of the downstairs doors.  Almost every morning, we find that it has been laboriously dragged somewhere else, usually onto the stairs or even all the way upstairs.  

We knew one of the cats was doing this, but didn't know which one it was.  Now that we know it's Chutzpaw, maybe we'll start calling him Sisypuss, since he apparently feels compelled to repeat this process every night.

We really could use a big King Snake around here to take out the gophers and California Ground Squirrels that are digging up our yard.

Just not in the house.  

Black Friday? No Thanks

Gopher

We don't go shopping on the day after Thanksgiving; we'd rather stay home and avoid the crowds.

It reminded me of a couple of weeks ago when we were up at Hart Winery in Temecula.  We were sitting outside of several hours; it was a very pleasant day and we enjoyed sitting in the shade of a huge sycamore tree.

Suddenly, Cindy noticed some movement out of the corner of her eye.  We looked around and were surprised to see a gopher staring at us from a hole he had opened up a few feet away from us.

Gopher Hole

He would pop his head out briefly, seize a few blades of grass, then duck back into his hole with the grass.

After a while he had apparently had enough and simply retreated into the hole, filled up the entrance with dirt and retired to enjoy his blades of grass in peace and quiet.  We felt just the same on Friday.

We had fun watching this gopher, but the ones that are digging up our yard are a different story.

Delicata Squash, Yum

Delicata Squash

Cindy planted the usual zucchini and squash plants this year, but she also planted a dwarf Delicata Squash plant.  It only produced one squash, but, with the green and cream stripes, it was beautiful.

We had it for dinner last Sunday, roasted with walnuts, and it was as delicious as it was beautiful.

She's already put this one on the list to plant for next year, and maybe we'll get more than one.

How Do They Do It?

Becoming a butterfly must be a very confusing process to go through:  one day you're a caterpillar with umpteen legs, happily chewing your way through all the vegetable matter you can find, and then you're compelled to form this cocoon, and finally you emerge to find you've only got four legs, but now you've got these wings.  How do they work?  What are they for?  How the heck do the newly emerged butterflies figure it all out?

As I said, our fifth guy flew off, but his flight was a bit wobbly at first.  He flew around the yard for a while but didn't seem to figure out what the plants were for.  Then he flew across the street and landed in the gutter.

He flew back across the street into our yard, narrowly missing a neighbor walking along the sidewalk.

Still figuring it out, I guess.  But at least he flew.

Number Five Comes Through

The butterfly in the fifth and last chrysalis in the cage finally hatched out Monday morning.

We were really afraid to hope about this one; the first one hatched, but its crumpled wings never filled out, the second one hatched and its wings filled out properly, but it died shortly afterward, the third one hatched and flew away and the fourth one never made it out of the chrysalis.

So we felt that it wasn't a very good record to that point.  I was afraid we might have contracted the Ophryocystis elektroscirrha parasite, one symptom of which is that butterflies are not able to emerge from the chrysalis or emerge with crumpled wings.  However, since this was the first time we had used the cage, we knew that the cage itself was clean, we were afraid one of the caterpillars might have introduced it to the cage and infected the others.

So, after mixed results with the first four, we weren't too hopeful of the fifth one.

Cindy had read something to the effect that Monarchs essentially shut down if the temperature is under 55 degrees; our days have mostly been warmer than that although the evenings have been getting down into the 50s, so I woke up thinking that maybe we needed to move the cage into the front yard where it would get direct sunlight.

After about an hour in the sunshine, the chrysalis opened, the butterfly emerged, his wings filled out properly and he began opening and closing them.

It still took him the rest of the day and part of the next to get going.  After a short initial flight, he landed on the Fortnight Lily and clung there for a while.  We were so anxious for this one to be a success that Cindy went around and destroyed the webs of the various Golden Garden Spiders and Orb Weaver spiders (without harming the spiders) in the immediate vicinity so he wouldn't get caught in them.

And eventually he flew off.

Showing Our Dedication To A Noble Cause

Wine Cork Mulch

Cindy decided to use our extensive collection of old wine corks as mulch under the three citrus plants in the pots in the driveway.  They make a good mulch because they keep the moisture in but don't absorb the water that the plant underneath needs, they don't degrade, and they don't pick up the dirt from the pot.

Also, they can easily be moved aside when it's time to add more fertilizer or to repot the plant.  And, of course, it's a great way to recycle the corks.

The problem was that we had enough wine corks for the three citrus pots, but not enough for the three blueberry bushes, too.

So, clearly, we need to buckle down and accumulate more wine corks.  A lot more wine corks.

It's a mission we'll be glad to accept.



* By "noble cause" I meant recycling the corks, of course.

Finally, A Successful Launch

Out of five Monarch caterpillars that formed chrysalises, three have hatched out.

The first one never was able to get its wings filled out;  the chrysalis had fallen a couple of times and the fluid the butterfly depends on to fill out its wings never got into the wings properly.

Number two hatched out a couple of days ago.  His wings filled out, but he never seemed to get going.  He finally made it out of the cage, but we found him on the ground with his wings outstretched, but after a while it was clear he was dead.  We just don't  know what went wrong with that one.

Butterfly Number Three, second chrysalis from the right in the picture above, hatched out yesterday afternoon and hung on to the top of the cage for a while.  We were afraid to get our hopes up again, but today, she moved to the top of the cage, then ventured out, trying to get her wings going.

She landed on the cement outside the cage and staggered around for a while, so I lifted her up onto the Jacaranda branches.  She hung there for a while resting, then went up on top of the branch, trying her wings.

And then we watched as she flew away, down toward the canyon.