That's right, folks - due to recent terrorist activity, I've been forced to declare a holy war against yard rodents, specifically ground squirrels. Here we are at week six and three of the corn plants were sucked underground, some of the beans have been decimated and all of the young squash have been chewed right off the vine. The tomatilos are recovering from the grasshopper predation, the radishes are coming along nicely and there are lots of tomato blossoms, but no little tomatoesyet. In the meantime, ground squirrels have overrun the yard, setting up a base of operation under the woodpile. While we were sitting out by the garden the other afternoon, a rat ran out of the garage and along the fence.
Now I've got no great love of rats, but they freak Jane right out. She sees them as scuttling plague vectors, so it doesn't take much to get her goin'. Ironically, we were reading Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitantsby Robert Sullivan at the time. It's quite a page-turner. I thought Jane might be a little too fragile to handle a whole book about rats, but she seems to be coping nicely. On the other hand, those rats better watch out. Same with the gophers and the ground squirrels. Y'all mind your own business, and we'll get along fine. Mess with my garden, and suffer primate wrath.
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