Frogs - everywhere

At least once a week I go to press the garage door button and I see this.  Always a different frog.  Always sitting on top of the garage door button which is about five-and-a-half feet off the ground.

Hickory Horned Devil Caterpillar - Yikes!

The oldest found this THING in the goat pen today.

Even RebaSue was a bit scared!

A couple birds came close and attempted to take a peck at this thing, but they'd quickly give up and walk away.  After a little internet searching we found the proper name for this guy and that he's completely harmless.

You would never catch ME holding it though!

Deer, Deer, Deer

This is what I looked out the window and saw this morning as I was about to leave for work....

Just in case you wanted to know

It has been all over the news that the 17-year cicadas were going to swarm the East coast this year.  

For those of you that aren't near the East coast, this is what you're missing.

These are the shells of the creatures that crawl out of the ground

 The shells are all over the place.  They cover the walls of the chicken coops, the edges of the goat pen, the tarp over the hay, everywhere.

A small section of the back of the chicken coop

From those creatures, comes these flying things that make a ton of noise.

And here is a ten-second clip to hear the noise they make.

It is farm life

Last night Faith was barking at about 12:45.  My natural reaction is telling her to shut up but I suddenly sat up straight in bed and remembered that I hadn't closed the door to the guinea coop. 

When I left it open, my thinking was that the goats would be around, I hadn't seen evidence of a fox in awhile, and the door was inside the run so a fox would have to go inside the run to get into that coop.

At 12:45, with a fox barking, none of those reasons mattered and I went to the window to look outside.  I kept seeing the light in the original coop moving, where the month old chicks are, so I pulled on my boots and jacket and went outside.

The fox was still barking off to the North of our property and I hurried out to the coops. The three guinea were alive in the coop so I closed that door and then I checked on the chicks with the light.

The chicks were walking back and forth under the light, knocking the safety cage around.  Darn birds.

I hurried back inside and jumped back into my bed.

When the alarm went off at 4, all I could think was "farm life problems"...

Have you ever heard a fox "barking"?

I walked outside to lock the birds up and I heard that darn fox again...

There is nothing to see because it was so dark outside, but you can hear it barking.  This is their mating call and will go on for hours at times.  The first time I heard it, it was about 150 feet from my bedroom window.  This time it was about 300 feet from the goats and chicken coop.

The video isn't the best since it was on my cell phone... and you'll have to ignore the clinking in the middle of the video (I was latching the coop closed), but you can definitely hear the barking and yelping.