Maintaining a perimeter

Yesterday I discovered a bird’s nest built on top of the motion-activated lights on the south corner of our garage. If there are eggs or hatchlings, it can stay. Otherwise, we’ll be doing an eviction and demolition and the squatters can find another locale. I’m not comfortable with the prospect of the lights/wiring getting shorted. Such an event probably wouldn’t do the birds much good either.

The north side of the foundation got sprayed for ants today. The little insects keep appearing around the kitchen sink from time to time and that’s not ok. I’ll be curious to see if spraying the foundation results in a noticeable diminishment in ant numbers.

The garage mousetraps did in one mouse (two traps triggered) yesterday or the day before. The pocket gopher traps we set over the weekend were successful and we now have one less gopher eating tree roots and mounding dirt to wreck the mower deck.

a preferred rodent controller

Photo by J. Harrington

As much as I like the idea of live and let live, I’m against unhygienic conditions and/or wrecking expensive equipment or twisting ankles due to underground rodents. If it weren’t for the enjoyment the birds at the feeders bring, we’d seriously consider adding a barn cat to our menagerie, even though we don’t have a barn. But unless I’m willing to give up feeding the birds, an outdoor cat feels too much like police entrapment for me to be comfortable. I’d actually prefer it if we had more bull and hognosed snakes around here to tend to the rodents, but snakes are about as common as drivers for yard waste trucks these days.

Trout are noted for eating bugs. Birds, bats and dragonflies consume mosquitos and other flying pests like horseflies. Hawks eat birds. There’s a fascinating array of bat predators. We live on a world where life feeds upon life. The COVID-19 virus, among others, uses us “important” humans as little more than an incubator or nursery. The longer I live and the more I read, I believe more and more that we’ve misperceived large parts of our role on earth. More on that some day in the future.

To Vermin

By Lêdo Ivo
Translated by Andrew Gebhardt

This morning I salute

the weevil, who ruins

the most precious grain.

I reserve my compliments

for the sober larva that does not rest

even in the most crystalline waters.

And spare no applause

for the silverfish, taking their time

in books, without ever learning the Latin for life.

I honor the cockroach

who, in the dim night, gnashes

at the old clothes of ordinary people.

And before the rat

who gnaws at the feet of the people’s table,

I bow, respectfully:

this resembles the passage

of the king who chews up even the dreams

and tears of citizens.

Woodworm and white ant,

to you, vassals of an obscure realm,

my congratulations.

To rapacious insects,

to the plagues that lay waste to crops and livestock,

a word of solidarity.

And I congratulate the squirrels

that nibble the nuts of poetry

on the moist ground of Washington,

and the hare hidden in the hedge

which, sniffed out by hunting dogs,

breaks open what autumn conceals.

And I offer my respects

to the engineer of decay,

the earthworm, who swallows man.

We must devour the wind and the palace,

demolish the structures of rot,

change the face of the world.

And may the admirable termite,

in the sack of corn or among the eaves,

correct for the error of men.

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