Mud daubers.

When we first moved into our current house, I was horrified to find a wasp nest stuck to the wall above the back door. We sprayed it with poison and knocked it down. Later I was dismayed to learn what makes this type of nest.

You see, this is the nest of the most magical and wonderful member of the order Hymenoptera, the mud dauber.

This noble beast is truly the greatest of all wasps. What makes the mud dauber so beautiful and special? It eats spiders. Especially black widows. Mud daubers are also solitary, so one wasp doesn't mean there are dozens more somewhere plotting your demise., and they aren't territorial either. Our mud dauber can be spotted hanging around the pond in the turtle pen, her nest is once again above our back door, but we've never actually seen her up there. It has at least six cells now, each filled with an assortment of horrible arachnids that will never bother anyone ever again. Thank you mud dauber!

The Cat Room.

The tiny dining room off our kitchen is the Cat Room. It didn't start out that this, and it's really all a matter of coincidence. We never intended to have a designated cat room, it just turned out that way.

We never really eat at the dining table, the room itself is super-tiny, and trying to fit more than a couple of people in there is a little silly. We do, however, feed the cats on the table, and although it is tiny, the dining room has two extremely sunny windows that are usually open. Evilcat's litterbox issues and pawprints on the table led to a few more additions.

The stools we keep under the table turned the tablecloth into a perfect place to hide. When the dogs decided to start raiding the litterbox, we put a tall babygate across the door and ended up with this:

It's a perfect dog-free cat habitat, complete with food, water, litterbox, places to hide, and sunbeams. Someday I'm going to add some shelves so they can climb/fall a bit. Yes, the dining room also has a doorway with a rounded top. It is way too cute. (When I'm outside I like to poke the cats through the window screen.)

Our Sweaty Mailman

Despite my best efforts, Awesomedog has an undying vendetta against the mailman. It's hard to blame him when this individual invades every day and is then successfully warded off with an explosion of barking. Awesomedog can identify the official uniform of the U.S. Postal Service.

And also postal vehicles.

But these pale in comparison to our sweaty mailman. Normal mail carriers travel their routes at a fast walk, but not Sweaty Mailman. No, he runs. Always. The only thing more exciting than a mailman is a running mailman. I'm not sure if Sweaty Mailman is trying to finish his job early, or has too much to do in too little time, or is trying to get into shape, but he's definitely ...odd. Every day he comes panting and gasping down the street, bag trailing off one arm, long greasy hair plastered to his forehead, shirt buttoned lopsided, sometimes with an undersized cardigan sweater stretched around his shoulders. Awesomedog is convinced he's going to kill us all one day.

We moved.

We moved into a new house that is down the street from Z's work. Now he doesn't have to commute an hour each way. We split with the roommates and rented a very old little house. We had a rough time finding a place around here that would rent to people with pets, so we signed paperwork and agreed to rent the place after just a brief walk-through. We didn't get to see the place again until moving day, when we discovered it was already inhabited by roaches. Also some wasps were building a nest over the back door. We immediately got to work fixing the problems.

The wasps were easy to get rid of, and the roaches were surprisingly quick to leave too. We put out a whole bunch of poison baits for them, cleaned like crazy, and kept everything in the refrigerator. Within a week of moving in we stopped seeing them at all. It's been almost two months and we have yet to see a single roach. That doesn't stop me from sneaking into the kitchen late at night and flipping on the lights really fast to see if I can catch them in the act.

Things That Live In My house

My house has a lot of things in it. There's me and my husband Z:

My best friend Pirate? And her husband Woot!:

My super Smartdog:

Pirate?'s Scruffydog who thinks he is my dog:

My Tinydog:

Z's incredibly Evilcat:

The Hellions:

And my snake, lizard, fishtank, finches, butonquail, and several elderly and/or defective parrots. It's a pretty big house, which is a good thing. Our previous house was a 100 year old 700 square foot farmhouse. It was pretty crowded.

I am the designated animal caretaker, therefore the animals must follow me through the house at all times. It's like a little parade.

Pretty much everything came in as a stray or rescue or some sort, so they're not perfect. I do enjoy them though, although the birds have gotten a bit demanding lately.