THE WAR OF SPRINGTIME
I was going to write something vaguely insightful about the war in
Lebanon and the historical context of imperial power in the middle
east, but I forgot it was spring, and as such I've got my own
battles to fight. Forget the horrors happening on the other side of
the globe, there's an invasion happening above my head!
Firstly I remembered to go out and check the shed for birds,
Starlings I think, that have been getting in to nest there for
years in spite of my determined efforts. They poo everywhere and
then half their chicks die (it's not like they even do that well in
there!) and you end up with rotting dead birds hidden all over the
place, which in turn attracts mice and rats... It must have been
over five years since it started. Back then the door didn't even
close properly and I thought that would fix it. Now I've rebuilt
the door frame, riveted sheet metal and/or mesh over all gaps I can
find, wasted days spraying expanding foam in holes that they ended
up just pecking out before I replaced it with timber and wire mesh,
installed plastic hawks on a pole above the shed and inside (the
pole just made a nice perch for them), and put an ultrasonic pest
scarer in the ceiling. Yesterday I installed flashing over the
latest suspect place where they _might_ be getting in, by levering
up some transparent panels on the side of the shed, although that
theory already assumed some borderline defiance of gravity since
they could only approach from underneath. Yet I went in there again
this morning to be met by five birds, though at least I noticed one
this morning flapping around the door frame looking lost. Since
they're an introduced species it wouldn't be wrong to try poisoning
them, though they seem to go elsewhere to eat and I don't really
want more dead bird to clean out, plus poison always seems to be a
temporary solution to pest control since there's still a way for
others to get in later.
I'm aware of that due to the other battle in the spring wars, in
which I discovered a new front while going out to check in the shed
- the bees. For all the news about bees dying off from one thing or
another, around where I live it's quite a different story. For the
last few years there have been hives popping up everywhere, and
annoyingly that includes the roof of my house. Although mercifully
they're not very aggressive, I've heard tell that the weight of
hives has caused ceilings to collapse, and in my case a bigger
problem is that they keep dying in my guttering, which collects my
house water and I end up drinking water full of dead-bee bits,
which also clog up any sort of filter or constriction in the supply
to everything water can come out of in the house. About the time
last year that it started taking multiple pauses for cleaning the
filter on my washing machine in order to complete a wash, I got my
father to help me pull up much of the roof on the house, kill the
bees with bug spray (yeah, poor bees, but my empathy for nature has
its limits), and pull out the hives before filling the cavities
with ceiling insulation (they got into the spots where there wasn't
any insulation already). Unfortunately we didn't have enough time
or ceiling insulation to fill all the empty spots, so left that for
later. But one hive must have got down into the wall and survived,
and now they're swarming from that into other parts of the roof.
I did buy some used ceiling insulation a week or two ago to try and
get ahead of this, but apparantly I put the job of installing it
off too long waiting for good time and weather. Now it's forecast
to rain tonight (maybe) and much of next week (maybe), so not good
to start pulling the roof off again now either. Back to living with
the buzz for a while more then, I suppose. Except I've just
gathered up all the bug poisons in the house to see if any are on
this list, although the need to apply those above the gutter while
ensuring I don't get poison in my drinking water probably rules
them all out anyway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide_toxicity_to_bees
At least mice have stayed out of the Jag for a while now, touch
wood.
- The Free Thinker
