Dichotomy

I found another bees nest on the back side of the main cabin, which I stay in if there are no guests. I sprayed that sucker. I have this wasp killer that shoots foam 20ft, but I'm always ready to run nonetheless. I think there's another nest, too. Inside from the loft area I can see bees frequenting an area under one of the eaves, but I can't see a nest. Jerks. They've been flying around the window up there a lot. I think they're looking for a place to put another nest since I killed the other one. I happened to have bug killer in my hand when one was hovering around the window, so I sprayed him through the screen. HAHA! I'm brave when I have a screen. I saw a few ants so I've been spraying the perimeter of the house, which is why I was holding bug killer. Ed makes fun of me and tells me that there's not going to be anything alive by the time I leave here because of the amount of bug killing I've done.
Really, bugs usually don't bother me all that much. Bees I think should all die, but other than that I'm okay. I'm not a fan of spiders, but I can live with them. I know I can co-exist when them, I just don't want to see them all the time. Other than that, it's just a problem when ants are IN a cabin that's supposed to be a vacation rental. Don't think guests would appreciate that too much. There are these little bugs that hang out on the wood trim near the windows and I couldn't figure out what they were. I came up with something that seemed to fit the description, except it said the coloring is light brown, and these were dark. Other than the color, they looked like springtails. I found one crawling so I trapped it with my hands so it would have to crawl on my thumb. it avoided it like crazy, then finally had no choice and crawled on my thumbnail. Once there it stopped and sort of turned its body side to side, as if looking around. I was glad it wasn't running around so I could get a good look at it to identify it, then suddenly it boinged away and disappeared. One of the descriptions of springtails was that they jump away and seem to disappear because it happens so fast and they're really small, so I guess I have my identification.

It's amazing how much I've used a dichotomous key while up here. I used it the other day to identify one of the trees we have here. It's got light bark like a birch, but the bark texture just didn't seem right. When the Austrians were here, they were looking at the leaves with binoculars to try to figure out what they were - The leaves are really high up. They surmised that they weren't birch. They thought they may have an idea of what they were, but didn't know the English translation. Later on they went out for a hike and meanwhile I saw a branch had fallen onto the roof outside of the upstairs window. I popped the screen out and grabbed it for identification. Meanwhile, when they got back from their hike they came bearing a branch from a Birch so they could show me what the leaves were like, so I was able to whip out my branch and compare. Great minds think alike. For anybody that's wondering, Birch leaves are toothed, while our previously unidentified trees are not. We're pretty sure we've got some strain of Aspen here. Just in case you care. . .