Sunday, May 26, 2024

May calling.

It's been a rainy and very buggy May, but I'm still glad I'm not freezing out there anymore. I still have not put away my winter coat, which hangs on the rack by the door. I don't trust this weather. 

But as I say, buggy as hell, with many skeeter bites and gnat encounters already. I caught some yellow jackets up to no good. Every year they find some place on the house they've never nested before, and proceed to nest there. This year it was under the second-story gutter. Well, I and my hose took care of them hive turkeys. 


I am a Cat 5 hurricane on wasps' nests. 

Been a really great year for the creepy-crawlies too, like these ninjas, rappeling from the trees:

"I'm going to land in your hair!"

On that note, I had the world's smallest grasshopper land on me, playing "My Heart Bleeds for You" on his world's smallest Cricket-in-Times-Square violin: 




I guess it's been good for the birds, though. And on that note, the dog and I got a couple of visitors while sitting on the porch a few days ago. I have seen plenty of birds perch on the porch rail, but these two were flying all around the porch itself. I thought we were getting dive-bombed. 


Well, turns out they were house hunters, and now every evening we see this: 



This has been going on for the better part of the week. I've had to hose off the planks under their preferred bedroom, but otherwise they are ideal tenants -- for squatters. I'm thinking it's their house now; I may have to move. 

Finally, big ups to the highway department on this one: 


To be fair, it's on a dead-end street. On the other hand, I've seen one driver fly through it recently. And on the other other hand (may I borrow yours?), the taxes we pay around here should guarantee concierge service for our road signs. 

It's for the boids, I tell ya! 

6 comments:

peacelovewoodstock said...

A couple of summers ago, we spotted a gigantic, bigger-than-a-basketball wasps nest hanging from a branch high up in a tree in our yard. So I did what any red-blooded man would do, I convinced my wife that I needed to buy a pellet rifle with a scope, so I could shoot it down.

She is phobic about wasps and bees (ok, allergic) and so didn't argue too much. Fifty pellets later and it's dawning on me that using a pellet rifle to try to shoot a wasp nest down from a branch 100' up in a tree is what some might call "a foolish waste of time".

Later that year, once the trees had shed most of their leaves, the wasps nest was nowhere to be seen, I never found any remnants or other trace of it anywhere in the yard below. But now I have this cool pellet rifle with a scope.

Robert said...

Weren't we supposed to have a Biblical Plague of Locusts this year? I have neither seen nor heard a single locust.

rbj13

Stiiv said...

And what about the murder hornets?? Huh?? ;>

🐻 bgbear said...

Some boids is trying to nest in the laundry room (it is a separate building from house). Annoying one flies out every time we go in.

Circle of life lesson that I have seen it play out before in laundry room and garage. Birds build the nest, lay the eggs, and then the rats raid the nest.

Mag said...

bgbear, where do you live?? A separate laundry from the house, with rats?

🐻 bgbear said...

Santa Cruz, CA, semi-rural.