Enough wildlife, thankyouverymuch

One thing I love about owning a house and having a backyard is having a garden. And while this year is a total experiment and I've realized I really don't have a clue, it's been fun.

That is, until my flowers started dissappearing. The town of Superior has just a few rabbits around. I'm talking seeing at least one rabbit every few houses while out running in the morning. Most days I see 2+ in our front yard at some point. They're everywhere! Apparently they are worse this year about getting into backyards (neighbors report) than in the past. Anyway, I've thought they were pretty cute until now. I've had flowers vanish within 24 hours of planting them! AH! Maddening and expensive! So we're trying a nasty smelling (dries odorless) spray called Liquid Fence (kinda works?), and are trying to close off all possible entries through the fence. I never thought I could have such feelings towards bunnies.

And if that's not enough excitement for you, I had a little scarier encounter with wildlife two days ago. I was jogging to meet a friend to go on a walk. (Jogging because I was late, of course). We have lots of open space near us that winds between streets and has nice paved paths through it. I had decided to cut through on the paths instead of going around through the neighborhood and was jogging down a hill when I saw it:

Yes, a RATTLESNAKE! (no, this is not an actual picture of it). It was sunning itself with the first 1.5-2 feet of it on the path. It was pretty big around so I'm sure there was much more to it than I could see, but I didn't care to find out. I had been going at a pretty good pace striding down the hill with the jogging stroller and had to screech to a halt to avoid running over it. It didn't coil or rattle at me, but gave me a good stare as I quickly backed up. Zach was definately within striking range. I tend to zone out a bit when walking or running and I'm so grateful that I noticed it in time. Thankfully we were able to book it back up the hill without an incident, but I must say I'm going to avoid that path for awhile.