Spring has sprung!

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 4:51 pm

Gawd it's nice today! 80 degrees and low humidity. I'm going outside to play! The weather in the Pacific NW is fickle but pleasant, so I'm going to take full advantage of it until the next rain front comes in at the end of the week. Summer's comin'.

Spidey · Post by **Spidey** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 5:00 pm

Indeed, I feel the fever already.

Neo · Post by **Neo** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 10:53 pm

I wonder where the bunny iz. =P

you knew that was coming. ^_~

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 11:02 pm

it going to be back down to 50 in a couple of days! (hope it rains .. HARD. My allergies are killin me.)

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 11:36 pm

Neo wrote:I wonder where the bunny iz. =P

Corvallis native, last Sat

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Tue Apr 21, 2009 9:09 am

Sh*t! I wish the damn hawks soaring overhead would get the ones roaming around eating everything in my yard! Little pests!

I've seen cougar spore in my next door neighbor's yard and there was a sighting just yesterday near Wilson Elementary School in north Corvallis. A cougar apparently mauled someone's pet cat and it didn't seem afraid of humans. I wish the cougars around here would cull some of the deer population. My yard is a deer highway and they just stand there and look at you while eating your landscaping. Grrrrrrrrrr!

Octopus · Post by **Octopus** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 7:24 am

Phhhsss... my allergies blow... or make me blow my nose.

Top Wop · Post by **Top Wop** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:00 am

Only 51, but its going to be in the upper 70's for the next several days which is awesome.

Speaking of hawks, I counted 7 flying over my house the other day.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:43 am

tunnelcat wrote:I wish the damn hawks soaring overhead would get the ones roaming around eating everything in my yard! Little pests!

Sounds more like Turkey Vultures then

Canuck · Post by **Canuck** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:56 pm

Blizzard today with -10C and 30 cm. of snow.
Translation for the US readers;
14F and a foot of snow. Going to be cold and snowy until May 1 when we get a heatwave of 12C/53F.

Zantor · Post by **Zantor** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 3:44 pm

High of 81 in St. Louis today! It'll stay in the 80s for the next 4 days or so.

ccb056 · Post by **ccb056** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 4:06 pm

tunnelcat wrote:Sh*t! I wish the damn hawks soaring overhead would get the ones roaming around eating everything in my yard! Little pests!

I've seen cougar spore in my next door neighbor's yard and there was a sighting just yesterday near Wilson Elementary School in north Corvallis. A cougar apparently mauled someone's pet cat and it didn't seem afraid of humans. I wish the cougars around here would cull some of the deer population. My yard is a deer highway and they just stand there and look at you while eating your landscaping. Grrrrrrrrrr!

Sounds like you need a firearm.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 4:55 pm

Citizens are prohibited to discharge a firearm w/in city limits according to Corvallis ordinance. Cops are exempt tho, maybe you could call 911..

Spidey · Post by **Spidey** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 5:28 pm

Or perhaps a bow, is in order.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 6:14 pm

Sorry, that ordinance includes bows (and crossbows), sligshots, pretty much anything that propels matter above \"harmful\" speeds. Using knifes, rocks or branches in self defense are pretty much your only options, but you probably as well use a gun in that case. Claiming self defense against a bunny may look funny tho

(unless you can prove it had rabies I'd guess.)

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 8:52 pm

I don't want to be a party pooper, but I've always preferred the colder weather. Oh well, I'll get my due again in another six months.

Spidey · Post by **Spidey** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 9:25 pm

I guess that ordinance in theory could outlaw running, riding a bike or driving a car…j/k

Oh well, I guess it’s down to throwing rocks…no wait…

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 12:59 am

I don't mind a little cold (wouldn't have moved to Canada if I did), but it's nicer without the rain.

Kiran · Post by **Kiran** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:34 am

Hum... I plan to plant a garden in my backyard but I have seen rabbits across the neighborhood... how futile would it be to start up a vegetable garden? Could I succeed? Is there a way without killing the cute rodents?

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 12:40 pm

Kiran, just put some chicken wire around your garden.

We had a nice last Sat. with temps near 70. Went out and bought some planters/planting soil/ flower seeds to start on my deck flower garden. Got some morning glory/nasturtium/cypress vine seeds planted already (after soaking them overnite in water). Hopefully my deck will be a regular humming bird pit stop and I can get some good photo's.
In my yard the deer are a problem coming right up on the front porch to eat my plants. So now if I see them I either yell at them or get the pellet gun and give them a \"Not Welcome\" shot. This weekend is supposed to be near 80...yea global warming.

EngDrewman · Post by **EngDrewman** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 3:41 pm

Grendel wrote:Citizens are prohibited to discharge a firearm w/in city limits according to Corvallis ordinance. Cops are exempt tho, maybe you could call 911..

Unless it's silenced... then no one will ever know!

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:07 pm

Grendel wrote:Sounds more like Turkey Vultures then

No, I've seen hawks of some sort of bird-of-prey soaring overhead. They have light brown and white coloration, the crows love to hassle them all the time and I can hear their distinctive cry. The turkey vultures are bigger, darker and don't vocalize often and are UGLY!

So much for the warm weather. Now we're getting hail, albeit small hail. Not like the golf ball-sized stuff we got in Colorado that destroyed the landscaping, trashed the wood windows on the house, broke skylights and knocked off all the asphalt and rock coating on our roof shingles, necessitating replacement of the entire roof.

Don't get me going about killing deer. I'd LOVE to do it (I'm not a Bambi lover when it comes to these pests) and keep the venison, but these deer look scraggly and sick a lot of the time, not good eating material.

flip · Post by **flip** » Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:45 pm

@Kiran

Sprinkle dried blood meal or shaved soap around your garden. Rabbits will smell it and head the other way.

Canuck · Post by **Canuck** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 6:05 pm

Ok its still fricken' snowing here, blizzarding to be exact. South of us 70 cm. has already fallen with more tonight.

Kiran · Post by **Kiran** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:47 am

Spring has sprung!- And here comes the insect problems!!!

I considered making a new topic on bug problems but it's related to this thread so why not.

I never really had any bug problems that couldn't be solved with a simple spray-on by a pesticide- until now.

The giant black ants (carpenter ants they're called?) are roaming the house. Once in awhile I find them crawling in a random place. I can keep the house clean but I don't think that'll keep them away thanks to cat food and water bowl and the dirt our dog brings in. I just about lost it last night when I found a pile (about 6 or 7) barely alive black ants by the wall in the den. RAID and ORTHO home defense doesn't kill them (unless I kept soaking it for about 15 sprays and that only puts them on a slow death).

I did find, a couple days ago, what seems like a possible nest of these black ants. Any suggestions on how to kill off a nest? I saw like, tiny little pieces of what you'd see on a tiny ant hill, and a lotta black ants.

How about repelling the ants from our home without risking harm to our dog (who likes just about anything she thinks is worth licking up)?
I don't like insects and never had to go to bed worrying if I would find something crawling up my skin.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 9:44 am

The Ortho Home Defense Max is about the ONLY thing out there now that will kill ants, but as you've found, not as well against large ones. You'll just have to soak the nooks and crannies around the edge of the house. Diazinon used to be the pesticide of choice for killing ants, but it's been banned. You may have to get a professional to spray, but their stuff might be more toxic to pets.

I get pavement ants here, which are really, really tiny, but love to take up residence in the nooks and crannies of my house. Irritating as hell! So I spray Ortho Max around the house under the siding and around the door opening bases, especially in the spring and summer. Since my ants are small, this stuff will kill them even after it dries. However, I've noticed that you have to really douse larger insects to sicken or kill them.

If you want to kill off a nest, try spraying and soaking the nest with a can of Raid wasp killer and covering it up. That stuff seems more potent.

At least you don't have mud wasps. I have to block off the drainage openings along the edges of my windows every June or they get in between the sash and frame, build mud nests and then you can't get the windows open! I also can't do work on the roof in the summer without being attacked by the other type, the paper wasp. They love the gaps under my roof tiles and are already swarming around building nests. Isn't nature grand!

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:58 am

If you have a carpenter ant infestation, FIND THE NEST and kill it ASAP !! These guys can be as bad as termites. Check w/ a pro about how to get effectively rid of them.

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:09 pm

I hear high explosives work.

Kiran · Post by **Kiran** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:24 pm

Thanks, Tunnelcat for the link. It's pretty useful. I find a lot of them on the driveway right in front of the garage- but the house is made of cinderblocks. One guess is the nest is out in the yard- about three lengths of a 2-door honda civic (don't make fun of my lack of distance knowledge... this is the best I can come up with determining distance

) away from the garage entrance. The nest area appears to have sawdust covering a small area and I can see younger black ants crawling around, but not as big as the ones by the garage.

Looks like I'll have to do some hard searching- I'm guessing that if they're right around the entrance of the garage then maybe the ants are colonizing from the inside, which means I may have some moist wood.
Oh, boy.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 5:52 pm

Uh, wasn't T-cat posting the link..

I hope you are lucky and the ants are just foraging in your home. That site has some good advice, make sure you find & remove all colonies, the sooner the better..

Kiran · Post by **Kiran** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 7:28 am

Oh, my bad Grendel. I don't know what I was looking at

I extend my thanks to you, then. There is definitely a nest in the yard- late evening yesterday I went out to look at it and WOW! Must've been at least 20 ants scattering around! And these weren't the giant ones I saw in the house...

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Thu Apr 30, 2009 4:57 pm

Gads, Kiran. You've got a lot of different types of ants around your house! I'm starting to get SPIDERS in the house. They're starting out small, but they get big by the summer. BIG HOUSE SPIDERS! I'm spider phobic and freak out if they come in the house. Ain't spring grand!

If you have the patience, try to follow the trail to see where they're coming and going, especially once inside, and be sure to find the access points and seal them off with caulking. I had holes between the sill plate and the foundation where the electrician installed a grounding wire and it was big enough for hundreds of Elder Beetles to get into my basement. Once the hole was sealed, no more beetles. The garage doors are a problem though. You might still try the Ortho Max sprayed heavily on the concrete around the door as a barrier. Also, you can put sticky spider traps down to deter them.

If these ants ARE carpenter ants, you may want to get a professional exterminator to kill them (they have access to the best poisons) or they will damage any wood in the house, BIG TIME!

I was looking out the window today and saw a HUGE swarm of some type of insect! They were flying above and around one of my neighbor's trees. It was a giant greenish yellow cloud of fairly large insects, wasp-sized. Five minutes later, they were gone. I couldn't identify what they were, but their were a LOT of them.

Spring has sprung!

Spring has sprung!

Re:

Re:

Re:

Re:

Re: