Thursday, May 31, 2018

Something Fishy Going on....

My battle against the voles that are destroying my garden has intensified this Spring.  The furry rat bastards are eating all my plants from the roots up.  It's so frustrating to see entire plants toppled over with the tell tale beaver teeth marks at their base.
I've sunk a couple hundred bucks into castor oil granules that are designed to temporarily repel them.  So far, I'm seeing the effects, they're burrowing like crazy trying to find a patch of ground castor-free.  They're popping up in the chicken coop yard, but that's a story for a later blog post.

Two weeks ago, Admiral Smith came up with another method to rid the land of the vegetarian vermin: rotting flesh.  A muck bucket full of dead fish was donated to the cause.

My idea was to run the fish through a food processor and pour the slurry down all the vole holes and tunnels.

Foiled attempts.  Maybe this is what we need.

... a wood chipper!
I elected to try to chop them up with a machete.

Extraordinarily therapeutic to whack away like a maniac until I felt something pop in my shoulder.  Catfish induced bursitis, a unique case!

At first, I carefully inserted fish parts under every asparagus plant, hosta, lily, iris... then I lost my drive and start burying entire fish at the side of my fruit trees.

Now just about everything in the garden has had a dose of natural fertilizer and it smells like cannery row in there.  Whatever it takes to evict them!  An out-of-the-box thinking friend suggested I take the rattlesnakes I've been killing, chopping them up and put them down the vole tunnels.  Can you imagine the coronaries they would have?  Gimme a minute, I'm enjoying the image...