Things Are Looking Up

"Things" are pretty much status quo, but I certainly am looking up.  The warmer weather has brought out the black widows in the goat barn and the wasps, hornets, yellow jackets (whatever...I'm not up on my entomology) everywhere else.  The spider of choice in the barn is the daddy long legs.  I used to tear down their webs to keep the barn from looking so ratty-tatty, but one day as I was tacking up a fly strip, the thought occurred to me that I was taking down natural fly catchers.  The daddy long legs are also early warning devices regarding black widows.  I don't know if the widows eat the long legs, or if the long legs just say, "There goes the neighborhood," when the widows move in and leave, but when I don't see the one, I'm sure to start seeing the other. 

Wasps (I'll use the term generically for all such malevolent insects) are a huge problem here every year.  There are two kinds I can identify...the mud daubers and the paper wasps.  Before Larry sided the house and enclosed the soffits, I would use a can of wasp spray a week on the daubers' nests under the eaves.  Now I see they've moved under the deck.  As they rise in numbers up over the railing, I hear Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" and see the helicopters in "Apocalypse Now."  The paper wasps make a really intriguing nest.  I usually find them about the size of a Christmas ornament in the chicken coop and in the branches of the oaks.  One year Steve called me to come see a nest the size of a football that he'd knocked out of a tree.  He assured me he'd sprayed it and it was empty.  Uh-huh.  Dumb and/or trusting, I, of course, poked the nest with a stick.  I cannot outrun a wasp.