Sherlock Holmes had Moriarty.
Inspector Gadget had The Claw.
Who is my nemesis?
Who is my greatest foe in the fight for ‘the good life’?
Earwigs!
Yes, I know you’re laughing right now (or flicking through to another website) but I’m not joking.
You gardeners out there – you know.
When the caterpillars appeared at the end of spring, after I planted out our first round of peas, our seedling survival rate was about one in five.
If you’d driven past early enough on one of my days off you would have seen The Man and I on our knees in between the plants crushing each crawly critter individually.
The personal touch – it really does make a difference.
Then the earwigs hit.
They are scary things! No I mean it - The Girl and I took a close up look through her bug-catcher and magnifying glass and those mutant little legume-munchers are all serrated secateurs and legs.
Cockroaches with crab claws that actually hack off your seedlings at the stem.
They swept through my burgeoning vegie patch like locusts through Egypt – or maybe I mean the Angel of Death – whatever…only one in 10 survived!
My fellow hippy wanna-bes bombarded me with advice.
The Man’s dad (an ex-commune commando) suggested a trench of alum around the garden’s perimeter – the earwig equivalent of walking over broken glass.
The chemist looked at me very strangely when I asked to buy alum.
The almost-organic chicken farmers up the road suggested individually wrapping each seeding stem in alfoil.
Not an easy consideration when the seedlings are just two centimetres high.
So we gave in and made the pilgrimage to ThriftyLink for the equivalent of earwig Napalm.
But I couldn’t do it.
Anything that has to be mixed in a darkened room in a plastic-only container (no metals, no ceramics) with rubber gloves and sprayed on a windless day (but not directly onto seedlings for some reason) just can’t be good.
It’s still sitting high on a shelf in a darkened, locked room next to the rubber gloves.
Then we heard about beer traps!
We raided The Girl’s craft box for old yoghurt containers, buried them in the garden and served up a selection of SA’s finest brews.
Our garden is now an earwig frat party every night.
Little six-legged Bonos drowning in alcohol – the corpses are piling up and, as a result, the chooks are enjoying a little nightcap before bed every evening.
Thankfully, at least for The Man and his Coopers collection, earwigs aren’t beer connoisseurs and they’re quite happy to wallow in the dregs from his homebrew.
Homebrew – nature’s own Napalm.
Every day you can see The Kids tiptoeing through the seedlings, a stubby in each hand – and as a bonus, the neighbours don’t visit anymore either.
It works for all household pests!
No, all jokes aside, apparently earwigs aren’t the only alcoholic insects in the world of nature.
Snails and slugs also have an Irish tendency to over-imbibe on the amber fluid.
But what about the grasshoppers when they hit?
Will I need something top shelf when they come around?
I wonder how easy it is to whip up a Glayva or Glenfiddich at home?
Maybe they’ll be happy with Mescal Tequila. Works for the worms eh?
Well – we can only wait and see.
I’m sure there’s a metaphor in here somewhere.
But the fact is, at Uni I knew men who could drown themselves in the same, relative amount of cheap homebrew and make it to class the next day with nothing but a hangover and a hazy memory of being thrown out of a moving pub at 3am in the morning.
While earwigs and uni students may enjoy the same poison – it’s clear to me that insects just can’t hold their liquor.
But mostly, what I have truly learnt from this little experiment is that if I had really known how many earwigs there are in my vicinity I never, ever would have slept again.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Ode to an X-chook
Julienne wasn't with us for long, but in the brief time we knew her we learned the true meaning of 'playing chicken'.
Unfortunately, Julienne lost.
Julienne lived for the challenge - to fly higher, run faster and evade the dog for longer.
We enjoyed our brief time with her when, while recuperating from one of her most recent escapades, she was a guest in our home (in a cardboard box in the bathroom) and chief earwig-catcher and onion-eater in our little house garden.
Sadly, she has crossed her last road after escaping her chookyard home and hiding from The Dog in a bundle of bird netting - literally stringing herself up.
She is sadly missed - mostly by The Girl. The Boy is too busy helping his Dad dig another damn chook grave.
The moral of this story - don't ever let your five-year-old daughter name your livestock.
Or if you do, swap the blue identifier ring onto another bird BEFORE she finds the little chooky corpse in the backyard.
Unfortunately, Julienne lost.
Julienne lived for the challenge - to fly higher, run faster and evade the dog for longer.
We enjoyed our brief time with her when, while recuperating from one of her most recent escapades, she was a guest in our home (in a cardboard box in the bathroom) and chief earwig-catcher and onion-eater in our little house garden.
Sadly, she has crossed her last road after escaping her chookyard home and hiding from The Dog in a bundle of bird netting - literally stringing herself up.
She is sadly missed - mostly by The Girl. The Boy is too busy helping his Dad dig another damn chook grave.
The moral of this story - don't ever let your five-year-old daughter name your livestock.
Or if you do, swap the blue identifier ring onto another bird BEFORE she finds the little chooky corpse in the backyard.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
A Death in The Family
We had our first death in the family.
One of the chickens fell victim to chookicide.
What’s worse is The Man was an unknowing accessory to the crime.
For days, every time the poor, bullied creature would flee through the fence into the next-door block, he’d fetch it back and pitch it back into the melee, until today, when he discovered it limp and maggoty in a corner of the block.
The Boy was distraught when told that The Chik (it now has its own title – as spelt by The Girl) would probably die.
The Girl wrote letters in her newly-formed five-year-old script to the couple we bought our three layers and the six chickens off – "Dear Mick & Trish, our chik is sick, can you make it better?"
The Chik barely lasted the afternoon – just enough time to make sure The Kids knew about it, were hopeful for it, and ultimately devastated by its death.
The Girl turned away at the burial, declaring that she couldn’t look.
“After all, it’s my first funeral,” she told her father in tear-stained tones.
The Boy, recovering from his earlier misery in a rush of testosterone declared, spade in hand; “hey Dad, look at all this space – we can dig enough holes to bury all the rest of the chooks when they die”.
The Chik was buried with a letter from The Girl.
Dear Chik, I will miss you. I love you.
The Kids faxed me a picture of the funeral – their little crayoned faces are all frowns reaching much wider than their little round faces as they stand beside The Chik’s corpse.
Then today, while I was home, in the middle of a four-day rain storm, another chicken flew the coop.
It was chased around the muddy backyard, in the pouring rain, by The Dog who is torn between his mixed heritage in situations like this.
The Dingo side of him wants to eat it, the Coolie side of it wants to chase it in circles in the hopes of winning a ribbon.
He compromised by licking its feathers off every time he got near to it.
This one’s going to survive.
It’s wrapped up in my bathroom with the heater on while the rest of us freeze, a towel wrapped around it and little teaset servings of chook pellets and water.
We’re tossing up on whether to call it Wendy, Alice of Vanessa.
The Boy wants to call it Jack.
One of the chickens fell victim to chookicide.
What’s worse is The Man was an unknowing accessory to the crime.
For days, every time the poor, bullied creature would flee through the fence into the next-door block, he’d fetch it back and pitch it back into the melee, until today, when he discovered it limp and maggoty in a corner of the block.
The Boy was distraught when told that The Chik (it now has its own title – as spelt by The Girl) would probably die.
The Girl wrote letters in her newly-formed five-year-old script to the couple we bought our three layers and the six chickens off – "Dear Mick & Trish, our chik is sick, can you make it better?"
The Chik barely lasted the afternoon – just enough time to make sure The Kids knew about it, were hopeful for it, and ultimately devastated by its death.
The Girl turned away at the burial, declaring that she couldn’t look.
“After all, it’s my first funeral,” she told her father in tear-stained tones.
The Boy, recovering from his earlier misery in a rush of testosterone declared, spade in hand; “hey Dad, look at all this space – we can dig enough holes to bury all the rest of the chooks when they die”.
The Chik was buried with a letter from The Girl.
Dear Chik, I will miss you. I love you.
The Kids faxed me a picture of the funeral – their little crayoned faces are all frowns reaching much wider than their little round faces as they stand beside The Chik’s corpse.
Then today, while I was home, in the middle of a four-day rain storm, another chicken flew the coop.
It was chased around the muddy backyard, in the pouring rain, by The Dog who is torn between his mixed heritage in situations like this.
The Dingo side of him wants to eat it, the Coolie side of it wants to chase it in circles in the hopes of winning a ribbon.
He compromised by licking its feathers off every time he got near to it.
This one’s going to survive.
It’s wrapped up in my bathroom with the heater on while the rest of us freeze, a towel wrapped around it and little teaset servings of chook pellets and water.
We’re tossing up on whether to call it Wendy, Alice of Vanessa.
The Boy wants to call it Jack.
Making the Right Decision
The Man and I were at a really bad place in our relationship when we decided to give our old life the flick and start from new.
'The farm' became our hope and saviour.
To anyone else in SA a 'farm' or 'property' is usually a stretch of spinifex-studded sand bigger than Tasmania.
To us, it was two little blocks of land looking over miles and miles of wheatfields all the way out to the Flinders Ranges – The Man's favourite place in the whole world.
At childcare and kindy The Kids would talk incessantly about 'the farm'.
If they saw pictures in a book they'd point out farmers, dungarees and tractors.
I didn't have the heart to point out to them that it would be more a case of gardeners, straw hats and a push-mower.
They just don't put those kind of pictures in board books about 'careers'.
Here we were, the capitalist children of hippies, servicemen and hoons trying to balance careers and self-sufficiency - it just doesn't have the same ring to it as 'Old MacDonald'.
While I was slugging away on production weekends at the paper, The Man would pack up a trailer full of books or furniture, throw The Kids in the car and drive the four and a half hours to 'the farm'.
I didn't get there as often but I knew we'd made the right decision when, two months before leaving, I ran away with The Family for a weekend at 'the farm' and discovered The Kids hadn't even touched the boxes of toys we'd taken down and the TV was only tuned in to SBS and ABC - and even they were snowy.
'The farm' became our hope and saviour.
To anyone else in SA a 'farm' or 'property' is usually a stretch of spinifex-studded sand bigger than Tasmania.
To us, it was two little blocks of land looking over miles and miles of wheatfields all the way out to the Flinders Ranges – The Man's favourite place in the whole world.
At childcare and kindy The Kids would talk incessantly about 'the farm'.
If they saw pictures in a book they'd point out farmers, dungarees and tractors.
I didn't have the heart to point out to them that it would be more a case of gardeners, straw hats and a push-mower.
They just don't put those kind of pictures in board books about 'careers'.
Here we were, the capitalist children of hippies, servicemen and hoons trying to balance careers and self-sufficiency - it just doesn't have the same ring to it as 'Old MacDonald'.
While I was slugging away on production weekends at the paper, The Man would pack up a trailer full of books or furniture, throw The Kids in the car and drive the four and a half hours to 'the farm'.
I didn't get there as often but I knew we'd made the right decision when, two months before leaving, I ran away with The Family for a weekend at 'the farm' and discovered The Kids hadn't even touched the boxes of toys we'd taken down and the TV was only tuned in to SBS and ABC - and even they were snowy.
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