A mystery

We have an unsolved mystery in our vegetable garden. I mentioned before that we planted some marigolds in the garden between the tomato plants because they are supposed to help deter pests. At least in theory. The reality is that about two days after we planted, the marigold were eaten. And not just a little nibble on the leaves. Entire plants are gone. They just disappeared overnight. Then branches on the tomato plants started to disappear and then one morning we found this:
It was a two foot tall tomato plant, now it's a stump. This morning I found a pepper plant that met the same fate. We've had trouble with slugs and caterpillars in the past, but I think this pest is much larger. We have a varmint. And, we better discover what and how to stop it or soon we're not going to have any garden left!

Surprise!

This morning was pretty typical. We had our normal routine of waking up, eating breakfast and getting Jonathan ready for school. At some point, Eric headed out to the garage, probably to move the trash cans out to the curb since today is trash day. After a couple of minutes he came back inside, grabbed my camera and then went back outside. I didn't think much of it. The sun was just coming up, so he was probably snapping a few shots of the sunrise. He came back in later and set the camera down without saying anything. I continued to tend to the kids and a little while later he left for work.

It wasn't long after he left that I remembered the camera. I grabbed it, turned it on and hit the "review" button. This is what I saw...
Aaaaahhhhh! Ew! Ew! Ew! Don't you think a person needs to be warned before being surprised with a picture of a snake early in the morning?

After calling Eric I learned that it was a small snake, only 12-15 inches long (I guess I should have been able to tell that from the picture since it's right next to an oak leaf and a pine needle, but my mind was too busy with the reality of the snake to think about the facts in such a logical manner). He also said that it was in our driveway. Of course, I was just about to head out to the driveway to take Jonathan to school. Ugh! So, I lead the kids out there slowly and carefully, keeping my eyes peeled for the snake. I don't know what would have been worse, actually seeing the snake, but at least knowing what its current location was, or what did happen, not seeing the snake and remaining in a tense state of expectation of coming across it at any moment while I quickly got the kids in the car. So far, the rest of the morning has proceeded without any additional snake viewings.

But, now for the rest of the week I'll look twice before reaching down to pull a weed or retrieve a ball from my front flower beds. I'm sure that little suburban snake is not poisonous, but I'm also positive that that knowledge won't change the number of decibels that could be measured from the blood-curdling scream that will be issued from my general vicinity should I happen to come across this reptile unexpectedly!

More bad dreams?

Elizabeth had another tough night last night. She woke up screaming again and came running into our room. But, last night was different. Eric tried to go lay her down in her bed after a few minutes, like normal, but instead of going back to sleep, Elizabeth started screaming and shaking. She was trembling violently from head to toe. Eric brought her back into our bed and she continued to shake for another half hour. It seemed that she could not snuggle in close enough to her Daddy. My poor little girl!

This morning I went in to wake up Jonathan for school. Suddenly I noticed something that surely was the source of Elizabeth's terror (Jonathan and Elizabeth share a room).

"Eric, come here and listen to this," I called.

Eric came in and heard, scritch scratch, scritch scratch, thump, scratch.

"We have a varmint," he declared.

And I was actually relieved! I was truly glad that we have a "varmint" in our house. Varmints we can fix, terrifying bad dreams, we can't.