We received several inches of rain last night from an incredibly neat storm. It rained nearly all night long and today the temperature probably won't be much over 70 degrees. Right now it is 64 degrees at 9:30 AM. The news just said that the rain is over until this afternoon. My boat project seems to be halted until later, but the yard and pond area are already greener.
Yesterday evening when the storm started, Camron brought over a small blue flag on a long wire for me to use. He invented it to attract thunder and spent the next hour running around my yard yelling at the sky and waving his flag. He also had his first encounter with a snake on Monday. I was in the middle of placing a fiberglass patch when I heard my Niece's husband screaming "Rattlesnake" from the pond area. By the time I was able to go over there the neighborhood watch group (my brother and a friend) had already already neutralized the (small Western Hog-nosed) snake. We had Camron examine the animal closely, showed him how hard they are to spot on the ground, and let him touch it. We still got rid of it since they are pit vipers, and venomous, but they are actually better neighbors than the mice that are proliferating this year.
Speaking of mice, these are so smart they can untie knots. My latest hunting method starts with drilling a small hole through a small piece of dry dog food. I then thread a piece of dental floss through the hole, tie the dog food onto the trap, and finally drip melted chocolate on the dog food and exposed floss. When I didn't hide the floss with chocolate, they would untie it and take the dog food. Now the chocolate makes them sloppy and they (sometimes) activate the trap. Not that I can ever win. Buddy doesn't have a dog door in his part of the house so Guy just leaves the front door open for most of the day, and Buddy is so desperate for friends to play with that he will let nearly anything in. If a lizard were to try and come through the door-way I'm sure Buddy would be all over it (there are two living in the front flower bed and he chases them constantly) but he probably thinks that mice are just more of his little Chihuahua friends from next door. The good news is, I think we are winning the war of civilization. He has been here for 3 weeks and has barely even destroyed the house and yard. Last year he could have done this much damage in an hour.