[RKDinOKC]

Snakes are good. They keep the rodent population down. I don't fear them or have a problem with bothering me, my livestock, and/or stealing eggs, so I don't kill them on sight.

My brother has that non-rational fear of snakes. He runs and jumps up on furniture like a woman from a mouse. He son does the same thing with spiders. It's the manifestation of their fear of death.

At my other house was a China Berry Tree. Box Elder bugs evidentially thrive on those trees. They are little grey bugs with black wings about the size of a roach. It was a full on box elder infestation. In August they would turn the patio and half the side of the house black sunning themselves. Walk out into the back yard and they would scatter like roaches. I don't like insects that are aware of people enough to run from them, it's like they are guilty of something malicious.

I tried all kinds of chemicals to get rid of them to no avail. Kind of on a lark one spring I went out hunting durning tarantula mating season. That's when the tarantulas migrate looking for mates and wouldn't have adverse reaction to being relocated. Captured a couple I came upon as they were crossing the road and released them next to the space under my lawn shed. They scampered to the safety of the darkness under the shed. I don't know enough to know if I captured a mating pair, but hoped I did.

After that I never saw the tarantulas again, but, in a couple of months the box elder population was very noticeably smaller. And the next August when the box elders love to sun themselves there were none that I could find. It was 3 years the back yard was box elder free. And, I never saw the tarantulas either.

Then one day the next door neighbor told me he saw and killed this Huge tarantula in his back yard. Told him he had killed the reason we had no box elder bugs. He said that he had noticed the bugs gone, but that I was full of it giving the spiders credit, and spiders like that were nothing but a menace. The next summer the box elder infestation was back in force.