Month: April 2004

turns out it’s not just

turns out it’s not just the birds

So I’m feeling a little bad about the bird rant. I went out to the garden tonight to check things out and lo if it wasn’t teeming with roly-poly bugs. There were clots of them just gnawing away at stems, roots, leaves, whatever. It was disgusting and horrifying and kind of scary, too. There were so many of them it looked like the dirt was just undulating… ugh.

Luckily, there’s this thing called the “Internet.” But it wasn’t much help.
The advice on getting rid of the things organically was to either:
a)get a duck
b)get some toads
c)put down cantaloupe halves upside down throughout the thing to attract the roly-polys away from the plants

When I told Hubby about option C, he very seriously said, “Right. My grandfather used to do that.” Seriously. My hubby knows everything.

It’s not really the C option that has me thinking, though. It’s option A, the duck. Of course I would never, EVER have an actual live bird living in or near my house on purpose, but if ducks eat the bugs that are eating my plants, then maybe other birds will, too. Unless they eat the seeds of the plants that haven’t sprouted yet. Then all is for naught. Well, excpet for the already spouted plants that are being digested by trilobite-esque creatures as we speak. They might still have a chance to be saved. But this means I have to remove the shiny objects. And probably put some cataloupe out for good measure. It’s time for a fruit-flavored bird hootenanny, I guess.

Dadgummit. This nature stuff is hard.

Sorry for boring
haiku-less pro-birdie post
won’t do it again

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Half-assed bird repellent rodents of

Half-assed bird repellent

rodents of the sky
eating on my black-eyed peas
blasted nasty birds

I have a long-standing hatred of birds. These dirty, flying rats with a disturbing pack (well, flock, I guess) mentality have always grossed me out. (One caveat: I think I like penguins. They don’t fly. And they have chinstraps, which I like.)

Anyway, now that the flying vermin have targeted my new vegetable garden I hate them even more. When I whined about the birds to my hubby he answered, very seriously, “We need mirrors and shiny things. Birds hate those.” I did not know that. My hubby and his encyclopedic knowledge amaze me everyday.

So I stapled aluminum foil to plastic drinking straws and jammed the straws into the rows of my garden. Then, in a burst of creativity, the hubby and I found some silvery, sparkly ribbon and stapled that to sturdy kabob sticks and jammed those into the garden.

close-up of shiny things

So far, our rather pathetic display has actually worked and the birds have stayed away. But those wily sky-pooping rascals are probably reading this right now, so all bets are off.

Are they blind? Because of

Are they blind?

Because of the frequency of large work trucks, small sports cars, children on bikes and other extraneous things and people PULLING OUT IN FRONT OF MY CAR lately, I bring you today’s haiku:

invisible car
like wonder woman’s jet, ‘cept
with swerving, swearing

And I thought the Altima’s cloaking device didn’t come standard. Guess I better read the owner’s manuel.

By the way, I finally got a new mouse and it is awesome. It’s not optical or fancy or anything, just a regular mouse. But it’s been so long since my peripherals were without parkinson’s that I feel ecstatic about my $5.99 purchase. It’s like when your car is on empty and you fill it up with the mid-grade gas and then you swear it drives faster. Or like when you were a kid and your new Nike’s really did make you jump higher. Well, my new mouse makes me write better AND makes my Internet connection go faster. It rocks. I love it.

Shut up.