Anyone familiar with Newhart (the Bob Newhart show reincarnate of the mid-1980s)would know I mean plaid clad Vermont backwoodsmen. They would appear with Larry, their brother ("I'm Larry and this is my brother Darryl and my other brother Darryl")and (silently) rid me of my backyard varmints. I'm talking squirrels, oppossum and racoons.
My friends at high elevations in the Berkeley and Oakland hills have their deer problem and are endlessly discussing solutions like hanging bags of puma urine (who packages this stuff?) and perusing ever changing lists of "deer proof" plants (cactus is perhaps the only sure thing). There are also the moles and gophers which, thank the goddesses I don't have. My sister--a fanatic and highly energetic gardener--once poured gasoline down her gopher holes and then lit matches and dropped them in. Fortunately nothing ignited but she may have been in violation of the Environmental Protection Act.
Squirrels and raccoons, unlike the deer, moles and gophers, don't rate pages of garden catalog remedies. The squirrels have people buying them expensive corncobs and sunflower seed bags at the hardware store! And I don't think anyone realizes that the huge hole in their lawn that appeared overnight was dug by a giant racoon and five family members.
I went out this morning to inspect the wire cage I put up yesterday around the trunk of the Banksia rose--to protect the poor mangled clematis vine at its base that somebody keeps digging up. Well, there was just a hole where the clematis had been--inside the wire cage. So it wasn't the racoons.
The squirrels continue to gnaw the water barrel (or is it racoons clawing it?), strip bark from the Japanese maple, the lemon tree, and the old rhododendron. They break the branches of the elderberry to get at the fruit and dig up plants in all my pots to bury peanuts somebody is giving them. The raccoons--big hairy thugs with muddy paws--just squash everything in their path and leave mud prints everywhere (the hammock, the pumpkin, the Adirondack chair). And they chew on the water pump and the hose and any gardening tools left out. And the oppossum? One got it's head stuck in the plastic netting around my tomato patch. Mostly I just encounter them climbing past the kitchen window on their way up the oak tree, their shiny red eyes staring uncomprehendingly into the sudden glare of the yard light. Marsupials. Who knows what they want?
The Darryls would take care of all this nonsense. With a backwoods BBQ.
Posted by briggs at July 29, 2005 2:52 PM