All quiet on the western front

The last time I will be on this side of the fence.  

Friday morning the dog and I walked down to the west end of the dirt road. Along the way I stopped to look at the new barbed wire fence my neighbor is putting up on the edge of his property. Although I will loose access to a place I have walked for 13 years now I cannot blame him for fencing it in. Some of the people in this area do not respect other peoples property and drive their 4 wheelers and 4 wheel drives trucks out onto the property and tear it all up. For some reason as I mentioned before people will dump bags of garbage and deer and pig carcasses on the property within site of the land owners home. One year they dumped some 50 gallons of yellow traffic paint into the ditch which is a wet lands area. The county had to spend a large amount of money cleaning that hazardous waste up. So no I cannot blame him for putting up a fence.    

Raccoon family night.

I stopped and looked at the edge of the pond and I could see that the raccoon family had been there last night and left a large number of tracks in the mud. They were most likely there eating the crawfish that are hiding in the mud around the pond. The crawfish come out at night to eat at the water's edge and the raccoons know it. It would be interesting to be there one night and watch what goes on there. I need my sleep so that job will have to go to someone else for now. I also stopped and looked at the Yellow Jacket nest which is empty now that the owner has killed the entire hive with a spray of some kind.  

The lights are on but no one's home.

 I pulled some of the parts of the hive out to take a look at the inner workings that I could never see other wise.As I pulled the paper nest chambers out I was often startled by what I thought was a yellow jacket still in the nest but as it turned out they were all quite dead. The parts of the nest that came out whole were other worldly in their appearance. There was an out side wall or cocoon that surrounded the nest and hanging from that were stair stepped egg chambers each one slightly smaller than the other. There was a little pouch hanging from one part of the nest that I suppose was where the queen held court and laid eggs. Just looking at the parts I brought out of the nest gave me the willies and made my skin crawl. I have spent an interesting 4 or 5 years watching the Yellow Jackets come and go each year and I was sorry they had to be dispatched this way. The neighborhood is more populated now though and these wild things will most likely succumb to our encroachment. Sorry about that natural world. Thanks for reading my blog today. I hope you have a great Friday. Bye.