Sing For Your Supper

Last night we had a nearly-full moon, and the sky was unusually clear. What this tends to mean here in Boggy Hollow is - Predator Fest.

Luckily, the coyotes seem to have taken the night off, so we all slept mostly soundly. Having a pair of livestock guardian dogs in the house at night makes for a rough one when the coyotes are on the prowl. Our fellas pace and whine, and will occasionally growl or bark if they feel like the 'yotes are getting too close.

Instead of yips and howls, the night sounds were the hoots and calls of owls... and some other, less enjoyable, noises. But I'll get to that.

We have several Barred owls who visit/live in our cedar trees, just a few feet from our bedroom window. So hearing Who cooks? Who cooks? Who cooks for you? as we're falling asleep is a fairly regular occurrence. Last night though, another owl joined the chorus. I think it was a Great Horned owl. It's call was so much deeper and softer than the Barred. It was lovely to fall asleep to. With one, rather large exception.

A bit of prologue: The reason that the predators love a full moon is because it makes hunting so much easier. (This is the part where the not-so-nice sounds come in.) You see, we have a rabbit problem. At least we view it as a problem. It's more of an attraction to the wild things in our woods.

So, even though we were being serenaded to sleep by owl song, and even though the pups were uncharacteristically chill for a night with a near-full moon, the night did not sail along altogether undisturbed.

At about 12:30, all of the dogs suddenly perked up their heads and let out a series of soft whines. Not the usual ballyhoo for a coyote's yip, but an alert nonetheless. Bill got up to investigate. He popped his head out the front door for a listen, came back and crawled in to bed. 

Me: Well, what was it?
Bill: An owl got a bunny. The bunny is screaming.
Me: :(

Now, there is no love lost between either of us and these wild rabbits. They are a bloody plague on my garden and flower beds, and I would *love* for them to just disappear overnight. Maybe not like that though? 

Anyway - thanks (I guess?) to the assorted owls for taking care of business, and thanks, especially, for the lovely songs. Tonight is the full moon, so we may be experiencing round two this evening. 

A Barred owl seen on a walk near our farm. Photo credit: Billy Jackson 2020

It's a trap!

...a fruit fly trap, that is.



It may look like I'm setting out the good stuff for the bugs (that's what they're supposed to think - bwaha!), but it's actually just a bit of apple cider vinegar in the bottle.

You can buy fruit fly traps for around five to seven bucks that are basically the same setup, or you can just put about a nickel's worth of ACV in a container that has either a neck or steeply sloped sides (impeding escape) and the greedy little buggers will flock to it and drown. I know it's mean, and I don't like killing anything, but between the plague of gnats and crane flies that have engulfed us this year, Mama had enough.

I still don't have a great tip for ridding your home of crane flies, though my chickens have gleefully taken up the cause, chasing them down and snapping them up out of the lawn. I also usually find at least one freshly drowned in my scentsy wax-warmer every morning, so there's that...

Bearanoia, the Raccoon Edition

Fishermen and outdoorsy folks here in the Northwest have a term for that feeling you get when you're on the trail or chest deep in a river, and you get that unmistakable awareness that something huge and toothy is eyeballing you. We call it bearanoia.

I don't know if this phenomenon is unique to the PNW/Alaska/Canada back country, but just about every fisherman I know has a story about hearing (or smelling) a suspected bear, feeling the hair rise on the back of their neck, then suddenly deciding to go ahead and call it a day. I've been there myself a few times blueberry and huckleberry picking. In fact, one of the spots where my Mom and I used to go every year to pick blackberries was a well known haunt for cougars - the big cat kind, not the mid-life tragedy kind - which for whatever reason, don't scare me as much.

Anyway, to finally wander back to my original point, I've been having bearanoia mini-episodes, featuring raccoons.

It started with a daytime sighting of a raccoon in our garbage can. The girls saw the bugger and ran straight in to tell their Dad about it. They've been given many a lecture on leaving wild animals be, especially ones that are acting out of character. A nocturnal animal out and about in the day time is basically the definition of out of character, and is usually indicative of it having a serious illness, like rabies.

By the time Bill got outside with the BB gun, the raccoon had vanished. But he came back, the bastard.

I was loafing on the couch, home alone, with the girls asleep, when I hear noises on the porch. I slink over to peek out the window and see the mother-effer looking me right in the eye and eating my goat vitamins. THE NERVE.

So, I run to get the BB gun, call Bill at work to get a quick refresher on how to load/pump the stupid thing, and charge out the front door, locked and loaded, only to find that Mr. Sneaky has left the building. I double check my critters, especially the chickens to make sure that everyone is locked up well for the night, then head in and try to go back to sleep. Yeah, right.

Raccoons, foxes, coyotes - they are my boogeymen. When I have the slightest awareness of something amiss with my farm's status quo, I go into a hyper-alert mode that is mentally and physically exhausting. And all that it takes to kick off the crazy is one coyote's yip, a fresh fox turd in the chicken's yard or a raccoon sighting. Then I'm up all night, listening for the tiniest peep or squeak indicating trouble. Worse still, when I do hear something that I perceive to be problematic, I wake poor Bill up in a panic to get him to verify or investigate. The poor man has gone coyote tracking in his bathrobe and headlamp more times that I can count, with nary a coyote bagged yet.

So I slept like crap last night, afraid that this rabid S-O-B was going to harm my kids or critters before I could get him. I finally fall asleep, and after forcing myself to wake up to take the kids to school, I pull into the driveway, ready to go back inside and catch a nap. Then who do I see scampering up a cedar tree as I'm getting out of my car? Mr. A-hole.

So like my super huntress Great-Grandma Lizzie-Belle (yep, that was her real name!), I gots my gun and a broom and decided to sit under the tree, staring at it for all I was worth, waiting for Captain Jackhole to show his annoyingly cute face. My plan was to pop him out of the tree with a BB, then once he fell, go caveman on his butt with a broom, pitchfork, rake, soup spoon, whatever.

I never did flush him out. Instead, I spent a good half an hour sitting in my driveway on top of an empty goat kennel, gun at the ready, staring up at a motionless cedar tree waiting, just waiting for that dirty sumbeech to move a muscle and reveal himself to me. Nada.

Bill is out now setting a second have-a-heart trap, this one right on the porch, in case the greedy little sneak comes back for a second helping of goat minerals (Seriously, raccoon? I'm pretty sure I'd eat trash first.) We are baiting with a piece of fruit leather, since my forced viewings of Billy the Exterminator - Scarlet's a superfan - have taught me that raccoons and skunks both like fruity treats. Our other trap, set up by the garbage cans, contains an aged Easter Peep. I'll be interested to see which treat he goes for.

So I'm kicking back and guzzling my coffee, well aware that I'll be up at 2am and pinging on all cylinders, waiting for my showdown with a mentally ill vitamin thief. I've got my headlamp, BB gun and pitchfork at the ready. Bring it.


Mother of five boys, crack shot, and salmon fisher extrordinaire, Great Grandma LizzieBelle and her catch of the day. Steady my hand, oh great and fearless ancestor, so that I may protect my family and flocks from harm and give that filthy raccoon whatfor.

Acrobatic Slugs?

Has anyone else witnessed this bizarre phenomena?




This dude was not only just hanging there on a string (ew) of his slime (ew!), he was blowing around in the wind and the stuff was bouncing like a bungee cord! I have seen this twice in my yard so far this year, once hanging from the wisteria, and once from a paper birch. I knew that the slugs were out to get me but wow - paratroopers?

Bug on Bug Violence

My roses are under attack. They're getting nailed badly by aphids again this year. And thrips, leaf cutters and leaf hoppers too. They're in a bad way right now.

In years past, I've tried insecticidal soap and neem oil with unimpressive results. I feel like the insecticidal soap is ineffective, and that the neem oil fries my leaves and petals. But I can't just let the aphids win! What to do?

Well, here's what I'm trying this year, praying mantis.



I bought an egg case from a The Lily Pad in the Olympia Farmers Market last week. The lady who sold it to me said that the eggs "activate" at 75 degrees, then hatch about three weeks later. With the weather we've been having this year, I'll be lucky if these little fellas hatch by August.

The egg case


I figure that even if they aren't successful in laying waste to our garden pests, they should at least make interesting new snacks for the chickens. I'll let y'all know how they work out - if they ever hatch.

Attack of the Fruit Flies

One of the few downsides to having a nearly nonstop stream of fresh fruits and vegetables in your kitchen is the appearance of the very persistent fruit fly. Try as I might to take the compost out daily, the fruit flies always seem to find a way to hang on. Our recently adopted hobby of winemaking has not helped. I see fruit flies buzzing around the airlocks on our jugs of wine, presumably drowning their sorrow over their inability to reach the sweet, sweet wine itself, and instead huffing up the powerful fermentation gasses that are regularly belched out via the airlock.

In essence, our kitchen is now an extremely popular fruit fly singles bar.

I have tried good old fashioned fly paper, with some success, and gave one of these traps a whirl, with decent results, but the surest way to catch them still seems to be leaving my cup of coffee unattended for 5 minutes. I tip my cup up to take a drink, and if I'm lucky, notice that I have a passenger in my coffee just in time to abort the sip. If I didn't already have it in for these guys, that'd do it. Not cool, flies, not cool.