Our birthday celebration was a big success. Everyone had too much food, did serious damage to the margarita mix and I only stuck myself with a shish-ka-bob stick once! Ha! It was a beautiful sunny day and all the grands and everyone else went swimming. Some of us swam twice, once before dinner and then again after. The grands were thrilled to swim after dark with the pool light on.

Later, upon getting out of the pool, we had another wild visitor. Buddy and Penny alerted us to another snake in the yard. This time it was not a rattlesnake. It was a good sized King snake all black and shiny! The older girls tried to trap him to remove him from the yard but ended up just chasing him out. We didn't want the dogs to hurt him. He slithered safely out of the yard to the rock garden by the garage. Hope he catches some of the kangaroo rats out there or keeps any rattlesnakes away.

After the snake went away, we watched bats swoop and dive after moths under our security light. They are like the swallows of the night. The grandkids were awed and not scared. The light shone through the bats' wings outlining their bodies and legs. I can't imagine how many bugs there would be if it weren't for the bats and the birds.

On a sad note, I went to let the chickens out yesterday morning and found our only chick had died overnight. I don't know what happened. Maybe one of the big chickens didn't like her or something. I will be glad once we move the chickens to their own place and get some new ones. We are only getting a few eggs from these hens and not very regularly at that. But they are too old to make a good dinner so I'll just keep taking care of them in their old age. They were good layers at one time. I once got 2 dozen eggs in one week. I was selling eggs to get rid of them. I don't think I bought any store bought eggs for 4 years! So I don't mind keeping the old hens. They have been good to us.