caangel
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,705 
Location: So Cal
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Post by caangel on Mar 10, 2023 4:14:22 GMT
I have to tell my kid that she needs more layers than just a swim suit on her way to outdoor swim practice in the middle of winter.
We live in So Cal and are in the middle of a rare cold winter with highs regularly in the mid 50s. Which for us is **freezing**!
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Gennifer
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,197
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Post by Gennifer on Mar 10, 2023 4:16:30 GMT
I know Iāve mentioned this before, but for 5+ months out of the year we have to use a snowmobile or atv (or walk, but itās quite an elevation hike!) for the last mile to our house. It makes grocery and Christmas shopping interesting, but it really sucked when my ovens went out in January a couple of years ago.
(I have 5 feet of snow on the ground at my house right now.)
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used2scrap
Drama Llama
Posts: 6,089
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Post by used2scrap on Mar 10, 2023 4:17:56 GMT
Shovel while itās snowing is the best Iāve got. Oh and always carry lip balm lol.
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used2scrap
Drama Llama
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Post by used2scrap on Mar 10, 2023 4:26:17 GMT
Bears - we have special cans and everything so the bears can't eat our trash, but it's pretty hilarious as so many people have fruit trees so you'll just find them chilling in a tree gorging on apples. My neighbor had one chilling on her deck- that might have been closer than I'd like! Ooh yes my dad had to get a new car because he didnāt lock his doors and had a fast food trash bag in the vehicle. š¬ |
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Post by AussieMeg on Mar 10, 2023 5:24:15 GMT
You need to stop threatening them with sticks and be nicer to them. I've never been swooped...I'm not on any magpie hit lists. We had three magpies in our backyard that we would feed. Whenever I was in the kitchen, they would fly up to the window and tap on it, asking for food. We were very nice to them, and I assumed I would have earned some brownie points throughout the magpie community. The sticks are supposed to be a warning, not a threat. I hope they understand that.  |
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Post by katlady on Mar 10, 2023 5:41:50 GMT
AussieMeg When we went to Cairns, there was a sign in the hotel room that said that bugs may come in once in awhile and if we find any in our room to call the front desk and they'll take care of it. Yeah, I was shocked to read that! I checked all our beds every night before I went to sleep.  We don't have anything really dangerous out here. Maybe rattlesnakes. We found two in our backyard one year. A friend was bit by one that was on an outdoor staircase. The snake was up against the step so she didn't see it until it bit her. And a few years back, a lady was walking on the sidewalk and a snake was in the bushes by the sidewalk and bit her. Oh, and we have coyotes, but they are more of a threat to our dogs and cats than to human adults.
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scrappinwithoutpeas
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,004
Location: Northern Virginia
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Post by scrappinwithoutpeas on Mar 10, 2023 5:56:51 GMT
Huntsmen spiders. I always leave them, even if they are in my bedroom. The only time we have to relocate them is if they are in my son's room. He's a wuss!    You go to sleep and leave something like that just WALKING AROUND YOUR ROOM? ? ? ? With you sound asleep so that you DON'T KNOW WHERE HE IS? ? ? ? ?O.M.G. Right!!!  I'm freaked out just thinking about it (major arachnophobe here)!!!! I would never even be able to get to sleep!  Spiders are the major reason I will never ever go to Australia. Sorry, AussieMeg - I'm sure there are many wonderful things about your country that I'll never see...but I know myself and I've had this phobia since I was a child. There is absolutely no way I could deal with the sheer number of surprising places they'd show up, nor the large number of them, the varieties, the sizes...all of it. Just NO.FREAKING.WAY. I'd have been one of the people sitting outside waiting for you to arrive at the beach house so I could take a wee. LOL  |
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Post by auntiepeas on Mar 10, 2023 6:04:24 GMT
We sometimes get swooping magpies here too but itās the kÄkÄpÅ you really have to watch out for...
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scrappinwithoutpeas
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,004
Location: Northern Virginia
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Post by scrappinwithoutpeas on Mar 10, 2023 6:31:03 GMT
hah - I'm back with an actual answer to your question this time.
The wallowing in jealousy thread made me think of something we do here during the springtime: avoid all tourist destinations! I live in the DC metro area and the area is completely overrun with school groups from about mid-March through April. We avoid all the Smithsonian museums, the zoo, the mall (the one with no shopping), the other mall (the one with shopping), Mt Vernon, and basically all of downtown (except Capital One arena and Nationals park, LOL).
We also put a rock on top of our trash & recycling cans to secure the lids and keep raccoons out.
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snyder
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,321
Location: Colorado
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Post by snyder on Mar 10, 2023 6:50:14 GMT
Warn lawn care workers or other workers to be very careful if they go into my back yard and the deer like to hang out back there. At any given time we can have between 1 and 11. Most of the time its about 6. Also have had to warn any visitor as sometimes they are leaving my yard via the side with the driveway and people pulling in will step out of their car and be surprised by a deer staring them down.
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Post by FrozenPea on Mar 10, 2023 7:07:09 GMT
Plug in the car (engine heater) on the winter. Watch for moose in the yard. Watch for eagles and owls when out with our yorkies.
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Post by lesserknownpea on Mar 10, 2023 8:14:45 GMT
I thought of a couple more: I don't let my dog off the leash at the river in summer, in case he gets bitten by a deadly tiger or eastern brown snake. We've had friends who have lost their dogs to snake bites. And when I'm walking in summer, I make sure to stay on the path, and watch very carefully. A couple of weeks ago, I was walking in a state park, and there was a huge male kangaroo standing on the path. It seemed that he was NOT going to move for me. I had to toss up between walking around him into the grass where there might be deadly snakes, or to keep walking on the path and risk being kicked or punched by an angry roo! (FTR, I risked a snake bite.) Friends in Sydney make sure they cover the opening to all shoes left outside, in case a Sydney Funnel Web spider crawls inside. Luckily there haven't been any deaths from these particular spiders since the antivenom was created in the 80s, but still...... you don't want to be bitten by one. Interesting. I am currently reading a book called Venom, about a researcher who spent many years gathering venom from many Australian snakes for research and antivenin development. Heās very passionate about his work even though heās been bitten several scary times. |
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Deleted
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Oct 31, 2024 23:00:11 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2023 8:48:24 GMT
AussieMeg ... love ya and all, but I am slightly perturbed that you mentioned the Funnel Spider and made me google it. GAH! That said, we do have to watch out for scorpions here. We are in the northern part of Morocco so, I have only seen a few in the 10 years we have lived here, but they are much more plentiful the further south you get heading towards the Sahara. We have the rainy season which took me a bit to get used to. It rains here in the winter, from about the end of November until sometime in April, it rains A LOT. Then after that, NO RAIN...not even a drop for months. I grew up in the humid south in the States so the dry hot summers here, I can take for the most part. I think there are only a few of us here that have lived in the Middle East. I am sure they understand when I say you learn to plan things around Ramadan. Businesses (schools included) open late and close early and not a lot gets done during the month of Ramadan. And it can be the oddest thing to see "ghost highways" at the time to break the fast! The whole country stops on a dime waiting for the Iftar adhan to be heard. Here they will do cannons right afterwards. Last but not least, the driving here!!!! The lines on the road are MERELY a suggestion. The first video, very true about getting stopped by the police. They government is starting to get much more tough on corruption but still quite a bit of that money goes in the pocket not the docket! The second video...this is the absolute TRUTH about driving here. EXACTLY! Driving in MoroccoDefinitely THIS is driving in Morocco
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Post by lainey on Mar 10, 2023 8:55:11 GMT
Thankfully nothing that's been mentioned so far, if I lived somewhere I had to avoid snakes I would literally be frozen in terror all the time.
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sueg
Prolific Pea
Posts: 8,482
Location: Munich
Apr 12, 2016 12:51:01 GMT
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Post by sueg on Mar 10, 2023 9:18:39 GMT
Living in Germany, the main thing is to be aware of when public holidays fall. All shops are shut Sundays and public holidays, and there are a few where shops shut early the day before (like Christmas). You need to make sure you have enough groceries and other supplies, as there is no running to the supermarket Sunday evening to pick up something essential for dinner. It is particularly 'fun' when Christmas Day is a Monday, as that means three days in a row of closed shops.
We also need to be aware of ticks, but I fix that problem by avoiding going into forests most of the time!
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AllieC
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,087
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Post by AllieC on Mar 10, 2023 9:57:41 GMT
AussieMeg that pic was from a video filmed in Mildura! Iāve never had an encounter but hubby got a chunk taken out of his ear once playing golf.
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AllieC
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 3,087
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Post by AllieC on Mar 10, 2023 10:00:56 GMT
@scrappingwithoutpeas donāt let these stories put you off. They arenāt everywhere - I donāt think Iāve seen a spider in my house or work for months and months, I see them rarely here and I live in the country.
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lesley
Drama Llama
My best friend Turriff, desperately missed.
Posts: 7,308
Location: Scotland, Scotland, Scotland
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Post by lesley on Mar 10, 2023 12:26:53 GMT
Thankfully nothing that's been mentioned so far, if I lived somewhere I had to avoid snakes I would literally be frozen in terror all the time. Saint Patrick did you a real favour lainey. š |
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Post by disneypal on Mar 10, 2023 12:43:48 GMT
The main things I can thing of....
We have to be extremely careful driving around dusk or dawn, because of deer.
When walking around, we are on the lookout for snakes...mostly you just have to make sure you walk around them.
When I visit my mom, who lives in the country, in FL, I have to keep an eye out for alligators. They are usually pretty small in her area and usually keep their distance, but if we see one, we make sure we don't go in the area.
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Post by lainey on Mar 10, 2023 12:57:31 GMT
Thankfully nothing that's been mentioned so far, if I lived somewhere I had to avoid snakes I would literally be frozen in terror all the time. Saint Patrick did you a real favour lainey . š This is why we wear an orange wig and get trollied every year in his name. |
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Post by hop2 on Mar 10, 2023 13:08:53 GMT
We are known to have four seasons in one day. If there is an all day music festival here in summer, you know it's either going to be stinking hot 42C or torrential rain and 16C! (That's 107F or 60F.)Ā We had that just the other day. Got up, snow on the ground, 29 Deg F by the end of the day it was brightly sunny & 61 degrees F thatās a NJ spring for you But yāall can keep your spiders. |
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Post by cakediva on Mar 10, 2023 13:17:36 GMT
That does it, Iām scratching Australia off my bucket list.  Yepā¦..Iāll be on the bench with you! |
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Post by auntkelly on Mar 10, 2023 13:26:17 GMT
Part of our spring cleaning routine in Oklahoma is sweeping out the tornado shelter.
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Post by bbkeef on Mar 10, 2023 13:29:12 GMT
We have to check ourselves for deer ticks if we dare to go outside without long pants and/or repellent on. I had an embedded deer tick last summer from sitting in the grass at our cabin. Icky! We have deer in our yard, we hear coyotes sometimes. The weather can definitely be 4 seasons in one day. The lowest temp this winter was -17 F in my area. We went to the cabin the last couple weekends and saw trumpeter swans on our lake. Almost hit a deer on the road-just staring us down. We've seen many bears up there (not yet this year), hear coyotes at night, see many eagles and woodpeckers and the occasional hawk or osprey. Meat raffles are a huge thing in the area by the cabin. Almost every bar has one on the weekends. You buy tickets, if they pull your number you get to choose a package of meat-anything from hamburger, roasts, steaks, chops, chicken. etc. People go mad for the raffles. I once attended Gun bingo at a bar, but we didn't win any guns. Seriously, it was crazy. I don't know how DH talked me into it. |
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Post by Merge on Mar 10, 2023 13:38:07 GMT
This time of year in SE Texas, if I want to sit on my patio, I first have to wipe the thick layer of yellow tree pollen off the patio chairs. Cars also get washed more frequently because theyāre covered in pollen.
IDK what else. I do shake out any shoes or gloves that havenāt been worn recently in case of spiders. And of course we donāt let the dogs off leash in any park with a large water source because of the potential for gators.
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Post by Mel on Mar 10, 2023 14:04:48 GMT
Ok, I have a couple that I didn't see and a few that I did see... LOL I live in Iowa, the midwest(although, I'm not sure why they call it the midwest, it's right smack in the middle of the country, but I digress...)
Deer... they don't care if you are driving, walking, standing in awe of them, if they are in the mood to go somewhere, they do! If they are just standing by the side of the road, I slow down to a crawl just in case they decide they want to take off, they are very unpredictable!!
Hawks & Eagles... same as the deer! LOL
Here's one I didn't see mentioned. Tractors. See above about deer! LOL Seriously, from early September to about mid-November (depending upon the weather) during harvest season, tractors have the right of way. On the highway, on the back roads, heck, even in town!
Our weather is nuts too. Hot, cold, cold, cold, hot, rainy, snow, hot... you get the idea!
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Post by lbp on Mar 10, 2023 14:10:57 GMT
Every single morning I have to dodge the deer and turkeys on the road. One day on my way home I counted 52 deer just on the 1 mile road that I live on.
I also live at the lake so I am careful to check for water moccasins before I get in.
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Post by mikklynn on Mar 10, 2023 14:20:09 GMT
I also have to slow down on my road home (live out in the country) at dusk and watch for deer bounding out of the ditches. Are the deer as stupid as the kangaroos? The roos will jump alongside your car as you drive down the road, then for no reason whatsoever, they do a sharp turn and jump right in front of your car! I saw dash cam footage of this happening to someone just yesterday. Yes! I had a white tail deer do just that and nearly totalled my vehicle when I hit it. I live in Minnesota and we really have to watch for deer. I also have to own warm gear for temps as low as -30 degrees F. I have shovels, a squegee, and an ice chipper for clearing my driveway. All that and I live in a townhouse where they are supposed to clear my driveway. At least I don't have to keep a snowblower any longer. |
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Post by workingclassdog on Mar 10, 2023 14:35:14 GMT
Although not exactly where my house is but bears... especially in the fall getting ready to hibernate. this is mostly on the other side of town closer to the mountains. They go through the trash in the neighborhoods. The people are supposed to have locks on their trash cans to prevent this. Otherwise, pretty tame on my side of town.
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teddyw
Drama Llama
Posts: 7,121
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Post by teddyw on Mar 10, 2023 14:35:59 GMT
When we lived in Florida we had a gopher turtle den in our yard. Pygmy rattlesnakes share their den so they were all over our yard. The girls could not play in our yard.
The turtles are protected so you canāt do anything about them.
Weirdly we also had little scorpions that would get in the house and bite you.
My neighbors pond was full of water moccasins. They were aggressive even on the shore.
Now we have deer everywhere. All times of day. I even get my dog the Lyme disease vaccine. Unfortunately no human version yet.
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I'm freaked out just thinking about it (major arachnophobe here)!!!! I would never even be able to get to sleep! 
