Wow, you are in luck! You have come to the right place. No matter what your question is, our panel of experts will give you several answers and you can pick the one that suits you best. Having spent some time as a child and teen in Texas, I can say my memories of chiggers, armadillos, opossums, big barn rats, copperheads, rattlesnakes, water moccasins, snapping turtles, tornados, and humidity leaves me a bit prejudiced against the Lone Star state.
I am now living in Eastern Oregon, opossums are everywhere thanks to some Texas liberal animal activist that brought them here many years ago. Rattlesnakes are native, so Texas bears no burden for their existence here.
Raised on a Colorado mountain cattle ranch for the most part, I spend time all over Texas with relatives that had some big ranches west of Hill Country in mesquite land and one never married great Aunt that had 40 acres in the backwoods of southeast Texas. After she retired from schoolteaching she became a recluse hillbilly, dressing in overalls with a scarf on her head and lace-up combat boots. She thought I should dress the same so after a visit to the feed store, I was just an 8-year-old version of her and learned to milk goats, run trotlines, kill and skin cottontails, make snapping turtle soup, and garden a 2-acre plot.
I already knew how to care for her 8 Hereford cows, but was disappointed in her 24 year old mare that only semi trotted after being stung by a mud dabber. Hoeing Johnson grass wasn't my idea of summer vacation, nor was spraying 7 to kill the giant grubs that attacked the many rows of corn. She insisted I sing gossip tunes with her as we slaved in the early morning heat and humidity to help make the experience more enjoyable. "I'll Fly Away" became my favorite. I even dreamed about flying high above her garden, more correctly called a hand tool maintained mini-farm.
I was excited to go to her country church because I could wear a dress instead of those horrible overalls and combat boots, however, pumps replaced my church-going handmade custom cowboy boots with cutouts and fancy stitching. "Those Spanish dancing boots are not to be seen in the Lord's house," she said. It was a long month. Treating chiggers in the nether region with sulfur leaves a bad memory. Chaining her truck in the summer because of a half-mile of gooey clay mud road before hitting the gravel, spurs my PTSD. I knew about snow chaining, but for mud, no thanks! Anyway, if I seem a bit anti east Texas, you know why hahaha!
Welcome to the forum and feel free to discard any advice I might offer.
