Sudden infestation with this yellow flowered low-leaved tall gangly plant

[The Daring Dufas]

Cool, macro-photography. My cheap Vivitar digital camera had a Macro setting. ^_^

TDD

[Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl]

aaahhh Dark horses are good entertainers! :)

[Danny D.]

Here's the last rattler, a few weeks ago, that was snuggled up against the house right at the door steps where the grandkids play ...

Note: For a larger picture, substitute "img" for 640.

[Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl]

uhh ...at your door steps?????? What are you? The snake whisperer?

Funny thing happened to me some years ago. I saw this tarantula running across my front porch. It was the real deal and huge. Silly me thought..."No one is going to believe me!" So I ran in the house and grabbed a mason jar to catch it so people would believe me, and when I got out there and took a look at that spider and then a look at my mason jar ... the spider was bigger than the mouth of the jar was, and I thought to myself .. "this isn't going to work". About that time, the tarantula decided it didn't want to play dead any more in the corner of my front porch and it took off running. It 'bout scared the @#!$# out of me when it did that, soooooooooooo... I let it go it's way, and I ran into the house thinking .. "you dummy! WHAT were YOU thinking???" I hate spiders and I was going to try to catch one THAT big??

[Roy]

Yes, it would be better Danny...it is not necessary for quality on these forums. If you were entering a contest then the image would of necessity be your best.

[Pat Kiewicz]

Oh, I hope he plans to release them somewhere. What a lovely snake.

(Our only family pet is a big, fat albino corn snake, Ms. Ruby.)

[Danny D.]

Naaaah. I ain't no dark horse; I'm just a responsive polite experienced inquisitive friendly erudite nntp poster who likes to learn & teach.

[Danny D.]

I've never caught a tarantula - but that story of the spider being bigger than the jar is interesting!

My penultimate black widow was huge - but - she turned out to be pregnant!

[Danny D.]

All dangerous critters get released into my ravine, which is filled with poison oak (which I had to tunnel through wrist-thick poison oak fines with a chain saw, just to get to).

The only one who goes down there is me; this picture shows why:

We call it the "ravine of death", since there are so many poisonous creatures and plants living and relocated there ...

[Danny D.]

OK. I'll start putting the 640x480 pictures there.

If anyone wants the larger ones, they'll need to know to substitute "img" for "640" to get the zoomable details.

PS: They both (big or small) load fine for me, and my Internet comes in through 15 miles of air to an antenna on my roof via WiFi. It was a bear to set up, but, now it's working (for all but for the VOIP - which has jitter that's too high. Sigh.)

[Danny D.]

That's why I own a lot of very long and thick gloves and why I've researched which are the best price for the best protection. (Hint: Welding stores have the best value in wrist-long work gloves.)

You may or may not have noticed the black stains all over those gloves. That's oxidized urushiol. The oil from the poison oak plant.

My work clothes are covered in these black splotches because the oil literally splashes on me when I'm chain sawing tunnels through the poison oak jungle.

Literally a human cannot pass without cutting through or hacking through. I used to use a machete, but, it was just too tiring.

Of course, I've also learned how to deal with avoiding, and ameliorating the inevitable rash - all of these topics we've covered in gory pictorial detail in a.h.r in the past year or so when I came out.

[Danny D.]

In my younger days, hiking with running shoes, I stepped on a small fuzzy soft plant with many short puffy branches looking like cute teddy bear arms.

Ouch! Jumping Cholla. Opuntia bigelovii

I no gotta lotta lovi for that plant!

[Danny D.]

I like the idea of the water weeder!

In effect, that's what I did with the garden hose nozzle.

However, I just realized, from your post, that I had this big boy buried in my tool shed!

I have to go out now but I'm going to try it on a forest of Scotch Broom:

And, if it works on that easy stuff, then I'll try it on the vastly more tenacious Spanish Broom later on today:

Note: Substitute "img" for "640" for a larger-definition photo.

[Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl]

I like that too! :)

[Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl]

ugh ... my worst nightmare ... years ago when my kids were toddlers, a black widow decided to make it's nest right nest to our front porch steps. I was scared of it, but more protective of my kids, so I said my short condolences to the spider with the egg sac and prompted smashed it and its progeny with a big board!

[Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl]

That must be the ultimate place to take out your frustrations on! :D

[Natural - Smoking Gun - Girl]

hmmm I've never known anyone to tackle poison oak on such a gigantic level before. I'm not sure I really understand how you manage to not get the rash, tho.

[Danny D.]

It's amazing, but some people think I'm weird, simply because I post pictures of what I'm doing, and I ask a lot of questions, yet I always answer all the requests politely, and I even buy a few more things to test them out for the group (e.g., with the hose nozzles).

They're not used to someone being responsive, and closing the conversation with the updated results, and, giving updates along the way. They think there is something sinister about that ...

Oh well - I guess I am a dark horse after all ... :)

[Danny D.]

Well, it's 500 yards of poison oak jungle! I'm the only one who ever goes there (I wonder why). It's very peaceful. The birds like me because I hacked out a trail,and they were right behind me, eating the bugs that I had to dig out of the steep hillside with my gas cultivator in tow.

Note: Using a cultivator on a steep hillside of poison oak was when I got the worst case yet. Something about chewing up poison oak vines in the tines got the stuff on me, no matter how hard I tried to dress for success.

Here you can see one of the "momma vines" which was about as big as they get in my ravine, where it's just oozing with enough urushiol sap to infect every human on earth!

[Danny D.]

Every mother would do the same to protect her kids.

My kids always knew to scream, and I'd come a' running, to take care of whatever it was that scared them, whether it be a rattler, gopher snake, black widow spider, daddy longlegs, or even a bee or horsefly!