The Yellow Garden spider (Argiope aurantia) was the one that patrolled my fathers garden back in Toronto Canada. It was a mean looking spider that would bite if disturbed... now i don't ever remember being bitten but i was warned, and knowing that it could was enough for me. I was also taught that this spider is a great ally for the garden for it's ability to remove pests.
Now there were also a lot of grasshoppers in Toronto... my friend Tom and I called them "clings" because when you caught them they would cling to you and as a defense mechanism would release (or spit) what we called brown junk... seriously.
One of our favorite pastimes back in those summer days was to catch a grasshopper and throw it into a spider web... it was a grand old time to see the grasshopper struggle in the web and get wrapped up in silk and then bitten causing a final kicking of the leg. Dad thought that was great too, nature in action, kids on pest control... a good thing for sure. You know grasshoppers are locusts right? They also have ears on their bellies if you want to get into bizarre facts, but the fact is they are garden and plant pests and a wise gardener takes these threats seriously. So if you are thinking it's mean and evil to kill garden pests then you should go read another blog... back in those days people would douse their gardens with insecticides killing all kinds of beneficial insects and essentially poisoning their food... but they didn't actually kill anything physically with their hands or their feet so in some way were absolved (in their head) of killing. Most farming now is done on an industrial level and incredible resources go into pest control often at the cost of sustainibility and overall environmental health. So the person who spends their time physically culling pests is in some way really doing it right.
I learned a lot of things from Dad, some of them i have unlearned, others i have adapted but a staunch opposition to garden pests is one i keep close to my heart. I was once asked how i could kill slugs by a person who then went and put slug bait killer in her garden.
As you can imagine we had some pretty enormous Yellow Spiders in the garden fed on a steady diet of clings. Kind of a weird thing to have a healthy population of large spiders that bite and then your father sends you out to pick beans for dinner... carefully you move around the garden your hands disturbing the beans to reach under to where the bounty lies... will there be any surprises?
Now there is a serious pest in our neighborhood... a little ass hole squirrel with a stubby tail that just reeks havoc on the local food producing plants. This bastard will go into a fruit tree grab a fruit, and taker a bite and then drop it on the ground and then grab another fruit and do it again. It will eat beets and chard and chew new growth off of blueberry plants, but some of the locals think it is fucking cute. I want that thing dead, but i kind of made a deal that if somebody stopped feeding the squirrels peanuts then i would stop counterattacking. And in fairness the peanut feeding has stopped and this has made a huge difference to the squirrel's annoying factor.
Anyhoo out in my front yard the bastard started to build a nest in our tree... this cannot happen, so i did what any sane person would do and grab a long bamboo pole, climb the tree and poked that fucking nest down. I made sure to do it before there were young in the nest as i can just imagine the horror of one of the squirrel friendly neighbors coming by and seeing little baby squirrels hitting the ground like hackey sac's and then looking up to see old man Robertson poking the nest with a long pole. I though i was being fair.. the nest goes up, the nest comes down, and the squirrel finds a better spot learning that this spot is a very bad spot indeed. No way does the bastard that ate all of my plums get to have a "safe" home in the view of my relaxing porch... that would be like giving a terrorist an apartment in the Bronx... insane.
But they are cute and furry and people like them and will defend them to the hilt. Now I'm sure if a person went into somebodies yard and fucked up their fruit tree there would be a full on hate for that person, i guess the lesson is do it in a squirrel suit and you will be OK.
I remember at our cottage we had a bluebird nesting box and a family of tree swallows nested it it... it was great watching them until a red squirrel climbed up there and chewed the entrance hole bigger, destroying the nesting box and then ate the birds... real cute.
Now there were also a lot of grasshoppers in Toronto... my friend Tom and I called them "clings" because when you caught them they would cling to you and as a defense mechanism would release (or spit) what we called brown junk... seriously.
One of our favorite pastimes back in those summer days was to catch a grasshopper and throw it into a spider web... it was a grand old time to see the grasshopper struggle in the web and get wrapped up in silk and then bitten causing a final kicking of the leg. Dad thought that was great too, nature in action, kids on pest control... a good thing for sure. You know grasshoppers are locusts right? They also have ears on their bellies if you want to get into bizarre facts, but the fact is they are garden and plant pests and a wise gardener takes these threats seriously. So if you are thinking it's mean and evil to kill garden pests then you should go read another blog... back in those days people would douse their gardens with insecticides killing all kinds of beneficial insects and essentially poisoning their food... but they didn't actually kill anything physically with their hands or their feet so in some way were absolved (in their head) of killing. Most farming now is done on an industrial level and incredible resources go into pest control often at the cost of sustainibility and overall environmental health. So the person who spends their time physically culling pests is in some way really doing it right.
I learned a lot of things from Dad, some of them i have unlearned, others i have adapted but a staunch opposition to garden pests is one i keep close to my heart. I was once asked how i could kill slugs by a person who then went and put slug bait killer in her garden.
As you can imagine we had some pretty enormous Yellow Spiders in the garden fed on a steady diet of clings. Kind of a weird thing to have a healthy population of large spiders that bite and then your father sends you out to pick beans for dinner... carefully you move around the garden your hands disturbing the beans to reach under to where the bounty lies... will there be any surprises?
Now there is a serious pest in our neighborhood... a little ass hole squirrel with a stubby tail that just reeks havoc on the local food producing plants. This bastard will go into a fruit tree grab a fruit, and taker a bite and then drop it on the ground and then grab another fruit and do it again. It will eat beets and chard and chew new growth off of blueberry plants, but some of the locals think it is fucking cute. I want that thing dead, but i kind of made a deal that if somebody stopped feeding the squirrels peanuts then i would stop counterattacking. And in fairness the peanut feeding has stopped and this has made a huge difference to the squirrel's annoying factor.
Anyhoo out in my front yard the bastard started to build a nest in our tree... this cannot happen, so i did what any sane person would do and grab a long bamboo pole, climb the tree and poked that fucking nest down. I made sure to do it before there were young in the nest as i can just imagine the horror of one of the squirrel friendly neighbors coming by and seeing little baby squirrels hitting the ground like hackey sac's and then looking up to see old man Robertson poking the nest with a long pole. I though i was being fair.. the nest goes up, the nest comes down, and the squirrel finds a better spot learning that this spot is a very bad spot indeed. No way does the bastard that ate all of my plums get to have a "safe" home in the view of my relaxing porch... that would be like giving a terrorist an apartment in the Bronx... insane.
But they are cute and furry and people like them and will defend them to the hilt. Now I'm sure if a person went into somebodies yard and fucked up their fruit tree there would be a full on hate for that person, i guess the lesson is do it in a squirrel suit and you will be OK.
I remember at our cottage we had a bluebird nesting box and a family of tree swallows nested it it... it was great watching them until a red squirrel climbed up there and chewed the entrance hole bigger, destroying the nesting box and then ate the birds... real cute.
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