Time to go run the mower around the front yard.
Call me a big chicken, but I just hate standing at the end of fifty yards of loosely coiled copper wire while ugly black clouds boil across the western sky...
In other news, I lost another corn seedling to the %^&*ing striped rats; I'm about to have to write the corn project off for this year and try again next year. Under chicken wire. Got a cage for the grape tomato plant, but I can see I'm going to need to get a proper chicken wire one rather than these loose hoops if I don't want the vermin to devour my 'maters. Also got a little wire stay in a tastefully-camouflaged dark green for the delphinium in the front yard rather than the improvised unpainted wood slat we had been using.
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27 comments:
Striped rats? That's why we have airguns!
This would do the job nicely:
http://www.crosman.com/site/listing/1073.
I might suggest a live chipmunk trap. I had an infestation last summer due to the bird feeder. I started out with rat traps but after two kills (I know, I'm cold-blooded) I lost the trap, figuring that some damn cat came for an easy meal. With the live trap, I got about six chipmunks, not counting the two pissed-off squirrels. I dropped the chipmunks off in the woods behind St. Vincent's. I imagine that I totally screwed up the ecology there, though.
May I recommend CB caps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.22_CB
I have a Benjamin-Sheridan .22 air rifle. I also have more CB caps and Colibris than I know what to do with.
The problem with the latter is the launch platform: The only .22's I own at the moment are a S&W Model 34 with a 2" barrel and a Ceiner upper for my 1911's. The auto won't work and the revolver is too loud.
The problem with the air rifle is that I have neighbors houses that overlook my backyard. I don't know how they'd react to some hillbilly chick from TN with a rifle in her back yard.
I suggest a live trap, and a wash tub large enough to completely submerge the live trap in.
I have neighbors houses that overlook my backyard.
I guess that rules out the scenario we see in Joemomma and the 10 Pump BB-Gun. ;)
Tam: Where's your Ghilly suit? Use it with the air rifle and if they ask tell them you're doing research.
All The Best,
Frank W. James
Got a cage for the grape tomato plant, but I can see I'm going to need to get a proper chicken wire one rather than these loose hoops if I don't want the vermin to devour my 'maters. Also got a little wire stay in a tastefully-camouflaged dark green for the delphinium in the front yard rather than the improvised unpainted wood slat we had been using.
See? This is how it starts. First it's just a plant or two, then a cage to "protect" them, then a better stick to support them, pretty soon it's a fullblown greenhouse and a commercial grow operation! Where does it all end, I ask you? It can only be a short step from there to growing cannabis and the like, "just to see me over this current financial shortfall", can it!?!?
It's a slippery slope I tell you!
Get a ghillie suit, the neighbors will never see you in one of those.
:)
50 yards of coiled copper wire?
What are you thinking? Use a gas mower and put that electric thing away before you hurt someone.
You don't even want to peek at my sunflowers. I had this vision, moving to the midwest, of a huge field of beautiful sunflowers. I have lots of dirt, and dozens of scraggly plants that got flooded out.
I compensated. . the back garage wall was painted bright sunflower yellow and I stuck up a big Glock poster that matches.
But don't you have cats? Hold back their food for a day or two and let loose the felines on those stiped vermin. Loads of fun for everyone...except the striped vermin.
LeeValley dot Com
Search on "cloche".
...that should discourage the beggars
My wife has been defending our garden from the local bunnies with a .22 air rifle. Even in the middle of red-state Indiana, we are leery of neighbor reactions to my wife stalking around the back yard with a rifle, so she has figured out some shooting angles where she can be inside the house and shoot through a doorway or a window and still cover the garden area pretty well. Much less obvious, at least we hope so.
We haven't been growing corn because when it comes in season it is abundantly available at high quality and low cost. Same is true of tomatoes, but we do grow those ourselves because we can can them.
The magpies in my neighborhood called in their buddies one night this week and picked my cherry tree clean of every cherry- every freakin cherry!
I counted 15 of those hoodlum painted thieves in my yard or the neighbor's, all laughing at me when I went out to put up my flag.
Next year I'm killing 2 of them and hanging them from the tree branches so the others can see what their fate could be.
That could work -- the red-hot prize-winning gunnie I call "The Sharpshooter" on my blog decied one year he'd had enough from neighborhood crows, and set up an air-rifle shooting position at a window overlooking hs back yard. After a couple of days of "one shot, one kill" for any crow inside his fenceline, they decided his property was Bad Juju and haven't been a problem from then on. ...Not all that stupid, the crow.
Another vote for a steel wire cage live trap.
i'm tempted to just buy a little goat for the yard for my next house. Just chain it to one spot and let it eat a circle of grass at a time, and then I'll have a polka-dot lawn. I'm sure the neighborhood association will think it's as cute as I do, don't you?
Get one of these http://www.pyramydair.com/p/daisy-22sg-air-rifle.shtml
I have one and it is super accurate. I once took out a groundhog on a quartering-away shot from 30 yards. It's real quiet too. I don't have the scope, but the Truglo fiber optic open front sight is awesome.
But why do you care what the neighbors say? It's your property and if there's no local ordinance prohibiting you from shooting an airgun on your property, they really can't say anything about it. Hell, they might even ask you to take them out from their gardens.
Chipmunks aren't on the endangered species list and there's no specific season listed for them, so they're pretty much open season.
"But why do you care what the neighbors say? It's your property and if there's no local ordinance prohibiting you..."
I've always gotten along well with local law enforcement. This is because the first words I usually hear from them are "Hey, how you doin'?" and not "Police! Freeze! Drop the f*&^ing gun!"
I tend to get along well with neighbors, too.
We used to have a grand dad who lived in the Park Cities in Dallas. Just a few years ago when he was well into his 80's he would sit in his kitchen, using his breakfast table as a rest, and shoot squirrels off his bird feeder with a Remington, bolt-action .22. He used sub sonic cartridges and had the TV turned up a bit to effectively mask the sound.
Rat traps and sticky traps!
Hardware cloth cages work very well. They keep the birds & mammals out when you can't be there to patrol 24/7. Gotta sleep sometime!
Though admittedly not as satisfying as growing your own... Broad Ripple Farmers' Market. Every Saturday.
"I tend to get along well with neighbors, too."
Well, I guess THAT'S important too. You could ask your neighbors if they object to you shooting the vermin infesting your garden.
And you'll just have to invite the cops to your house for a "Beer and a Shoot." :)
http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=195181
Shoot from inside. Combined with the non-regulated permanently attached airgun silencer, they'll never even know what you're doing.
Then there's alway a slingshot or wrist-rocket. They're under $20.
Here's a squirrel gun that might even provide some entertainment. Aim it at a fence or other hard object.
http://billllsidlemind.blogspot.com/2008/05/workshop.html
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