My little bitty buddy slithering around my garage floor this morning.

Probably sensed the possibility of rodents in your garage, Bob. Would hate though for such a critter to get accidentally left in garage and die there. Happened to a couple toads in our garage over time. People hate them and want to kill them, but they are good news, keep down the rodent population. If they are in the yard, there is prey. Once they move on to someone else's yard means they cleaned your yard of prey.

Here Bob, we have rattlers instead, however, haven't found one yet in our yard. At one time we could have had the possibility when our back yard was open to a 20 acre plot of virgin land 20 years ago (typical Texas panhandle open plains, few trees and tall grasses). But over time, that lot has been reduced to a new neighborhood of houses. Mostly what we see are bull snakes and garter snakes.

And regarding beetle damage, have the same problem with our desert fur and cedar trees. We've already lost 3 on our front east, plus 2 maples due to the beetles. Once they infiltrate, it is hard to get rid of them. 15 years ago we had some really nice pine bushes near the house front. The whole row was decimated overnight by a large black beetle infestation, killed them all. I never saw such an infestation before, ate leaves and all. These weren't even locusts. They came overnight, in a day or two we had naked stumped branches, so thorough were they.