Strolling through the pumpkin patch in search of the perfect pumpkin is what Fall is all about! And hey, the pumpkins you pick should be special: they're going to be decorating your home, after all.

That's crazy about your snake house! Crazy awesome ;) I live in the city, so I don't get a lot of wildlife interactions outside of birds and squirrels. I am sure they appreciated the upgrade from under the sink to a nice cozy tank and regular meals. Do you know what kind of snakes you had?

Ah, I see! Lol yeah, I'm totally just as excitable with pizza 8D also wondering, do mice smell unpleasant to humans? By the way you described feeding her, you sound like a really loving owner :D

You guys are sisters?! :O That's so cool!

Pizza has that effect on the strongest of wills :O All hail pizza!!

The mice don't really smell like anything! By the time they get to me they've been frozen and vacuum sealed, which probably kills what mouse-smell they had to begin with, but even after they've thawed they just kind of have a very mild, damp fur smell.

is my twin brother ^_^ or at least we pretend to be in reality he is super old.

I stand by what said if you are holding food and I am hungry I WILL bite you.

The beauty of hair!!! How is Oatmeal? You have it yet?

They were garter snakes, common but still interesting! I live in the city now but at the time i was living on a farm in a more rural area. My primary interaction with wildlife these days is all the spiders in my house, lol (i happily coexist with species that don't bite).

I don't think the goat thing is happening after all. Which is just as well because i really wasn't prepared yet. Someday i still might get goats but it's not imminent. It only sounded that way because of what my friend texted me...she gets a little ahead of herself sometimes. :P

Garters were my first guess! They're one of the few species of snake that nest communally. I remember reading an article about another house, built on a nesting site, that had a problem with them too. And hah! I found the video from the article: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhlYDuMdBFA

I hear you on the spiders! I'm not overrun, but there are definitely more spiders than I'm used to in the house where I live now. Still, I'll take spiders over mosquitoes :O

I saw that show on Animal Planet recently, where the Snake House was featured! It definitely brought back memories of the place i lived, but my situation wasn't anywhere near that extreme, fortunately. I mean i really like snakes and i'm not afraid of them at all, but i'd have to draw the line at being able to "taste them in the water" - bleh. Some might say that my house is overrun with spiders...for example, just last night i came home and ran face-first into a monster of a cellar spider dangling in a dark walkway. I'd prefer not to have actual contact with them but they usually stay up in the corners. I don't know what this one was doing but i helped it back to the edge of the room. :P I never squish my spiders, even the inconvenient or bitey ones...at worst, i simply evict them.

I'm with you on the snake thing: I draw the line at unsanitary living conditions. Enough is enough then! Though at least they never had to worry about mice?

And my what friendly spiders you have! So polite of that little guy to drop in and say hello when he saw he had company ;) My spiders tend to leave me be too, which is fine by me! I end up hoovering a lot of cobwebs, but I can deal with that! Useful bugs, I can handle. I had an exterminator come once to take care of an ant problem a few years back, and I still remember him telling me that he liked spiders because their webs helped him figure out what kind of bugs were living in the house. So interesting, our little urban ecosystems.

Lol, yeah...i like mice too but they're even more unsanitary to have around than snakes. I certainly agree that spiders are very beneficial. My cellar spiders in particular...they aren't harmful to humans at all and usually stay out of the way, but they eat annoying bugs and even other spiders that do pose a threat to humans, including hobo spiders, which live around here. I even watched one attack and eat a much larger wolf spider once, right in my kitchen. Wouldn't have believed they could do it if i hadn't seen it myself!

holy cow, there is some wild world of nature business going down in your house! Though I guess there are interesting things happening in everyone's houses, if they know where to look.

I'm lucky that there aren't any dangerous spiders in my area. My sister lives in NM, and she's always going on about Black Widows. I'm always veeeery careful to check my shoes when I go to visit her ;) I think she needs a few of your friendly cellar spiders to help save the day.

Mice are the only home invaders that irritate me. Well, mice and ants. Basically anything that goes after my food. I once had a mouse chew into my bag of coffee. Going after my caffeine is basically a declaration of war XD

Lmao i should do a spider documentary in here or something. Spiders are so misunderstood and feared for usually no good reason at all. I myself used to be highly arachnophobic until i moved into this place...it's a really old house (built in 1910) and had been basically abandoned for a few years before i got here, and was inhabited by so many spiders i couldn't get rid of them all if i wanted to. I either had to learn to live with them or leave so i decided to embrace them and i've come to really appreciate them. Of course if i had black widows, they'd have to go. lol Rodents in the house are super annoying. I had rats chew into a can of my coffee once too (i also had a bunch of those here when i moved in). Argh!

I would totally watch that!! I bet it would be really interesting. Of course if you're going to make a movie about your spiders, you have to pick one to be the protagonist. Then follow him / her around as she faces the trials and tribulations that is daily spider life.

But wow, talk about your trial by fires :O Most people in your spot would have run screaming into the night, or grabbed the nearest shoe and started whacking away. Your spiders are lucky to have you. Rats though, it's harder to make peace with rats. Well, at least wild rats. Rats are cute and really smart, but they make horrible roommates. Freeloaders! I bet they didn't even pitch in for power and groceries ;) Rats aside, your house sounds really cool. I bet it has a lot of character!

Haha, that would be great. For a while i was naming certain ones that would hang around for a few weeks but then they'd disappear and then be replaced by (probably) a different spider so keeping track of individuals became difficult. It helps that i was mainly afraid of webs rather than the spiders themselves. I've never had a fear of any little creepy critter that doesn't spin webs, so i really just had to get over the web thing. I guess after repeatedly running into them and seeing them in every corner every day, i finally got somewhat desensitized. XD You're right about rats...they're really TOO smart. In another house i had a slight mouse problem and i'd put out those live-catch traps and then release them elsewhere. Mice always fell for those things. Rats rarely fall for traps though. Somehow they even figure out how to defeat them and get the bait without getting caught. I finally set up a snap trap attached to the end of a 2x4 suspended out in front of a shelf (i hate the thought of killing them but i was getting desperate) so there would, in theory, be no way for them to avoid going into the trap to get the peanut butter on the trigger. Still, every day i'd find the trap triggered, the peanut butter gone and no rat in sight. >_< I never did kill one myself (so i suppose i can feel good about that), but finally a neighbor who was having the same trouble put out poison and i guess that was effective because that pretty much put a stop to the rat problem. I just wasn't going to do that myself, and i really didn't condone them doing it, because i was worried about my dog or the neighborhood cats getting hold of a poisoned rat. Nothing i could do about it though, and at least it solved the problem.

Hmmm, I wonder where they were all disappearing to? The plot thickens! You'll have to think of a way to differentiate between your lead spider and all of the supporting spiders. Maybe make him a teeny little name tag or something.

I can definitely relate to being freaked out by spiderwebs! They stick to everything! Being able to logically pinpoint the basis of your phobia probably helped you overcome it!

Man, your rats sound like a menace! I guess there's a reason that psychologists use them as test subjects for a lot of things. Sadly sometimes the only way to protect your house (and more importantly, your coffee) is to do the poor little critters in. Of course it's easier on the conscious if said critters outsmart said trap. You definitely gave it the ole college try though. That thing with the 2x4 is ingenious! If I was a rat I totally would have fallen for it.

Putting poison outside is dangerous :( A few of the dogs in my neighborhood growing up died that way. It was really sad!

I'm not sure...i think some spiders just roam around by nature. Sometimes they get eaten or displaced by other spiders. It's a tough world for the little guys! My dad gets the credit for the rat plank...he even used it successfully in his own basement. But it looks like some got away and taught the local rat population how to outsmart it. Super-intelligent rats are gonna take over the world someday, i bet. :P

He got him when he was 16 so late 70's, so I doubt that the person who sold him the snake was concerned about a 16 year old taking time away from school, partying and a pt job to maintain habitat, socializing him and caring for him beyond "Oh, good, he's got the cash to buy it!" Taking care of a pet is like raising a kid, its a lot of responsibility, he lived at home but as much as I loved Tom's folks, I think they saw it as His pet so trusted that he was taking precautions

LOL Sorry, man I should have said wood working or sculpting shrubbery (this is in no way a reference to Monty Python) since cooking is kind of a crap shoot with guys...some girls, too. You got this, D.

Its been forever since I've adopted from a shelter (lots of friends who go old school on Rescue) but I do remember the obscenely long questionaire and interview..the dog was special needs (deaf so was trained to sign language)

Seriously? Super old? Really? LOL Brat:P And you little heathen...you'd bite your own brother? I am so going to noogie you

Lol don't worry, i know a guy who could totally relate to that reference. It was still a good analogy, and like i said, i could benefit from thinking of it in reverse! XD That's awesome, the dog trained in sign language...i can see them being pickier when it comes to a dog requiring extra commitment like that. Unfortunately, a lot of people will quickly give up on a pet that seems "less than perfect" and requires extra effort, and i'm sure there are additional considerations with such a dog that not everyone would think about.

heh yeah, that kind of thing happens these days too. It's become a full on business for a lot of people and there are plenty of breeders who don't look much further than the bottom line when it comes to their animals. It's a different world view, that's for sure. In the late 70s though, I wouldn't be surprised if the boa was smuggled straight from South America / Africa / Asia.

Ahaha, you're dead on about the rats. I bet that's why they live in our houses: so they can sneak online at night and share trap-dodging tips online! That would explain why they keep nibbling on our coffee too.

LOL i can just see that, all those rats online all night, sipping coffee, planning their world domination (reminds me of Pinky and the Brain). I might have to try to draw that. XD

I can totally see that! First mouse traps, then... the wooorld.