Strange methods to battle nature’s pesky critters
During the brief lulls between rain storms, area gardeners are attempting to plant their crops for the year. Some handy tips for protecting your garden and lawns from pesky critters were offered in an e-mail sent to me courtesy of the Gardener’s Companion magazine.
It even offers advice on how to rid your lawn of burrowing moles. Our backyard resembles an aerial view of West Virginia’s mountainous landscape.
With all the rain, the ground has been transformed into a swamp with grass on top. None of which seems to have bothered our resident group of moles whatsoever. They continue to produce tunnels by the dozens.
Some of the tips for protecting your garden and lawn are somewhat bizarre. As an example, the magazine suggests hanging shoes and clothes that smell of human perspiration around your garden or corn patch.
Other ideas include putting a string of blinking outdoor Christmas-tree lights around the perimeter of the garden. Keep them on from dusk to dawn.
Put a portable radio in your garden and keep it on all night. Switch stations when you think of it.
Mice dislike the smell of peppermint; spread dried leaves liberally where you suspect the critters gather.
For moles, give them a dose of castor oil. Mix three parts castor oil with one part dish detergent. Use four tablespoons of the concoction in a gallon of water. Soak the tunnels and entrances with the mixture.
Dip an ear of corn into roofing tar and place it into one of their tunnels. They don’t like the smell of tar, and you’ll block their escape.
Place dried sulfur or wood ashes around the edge of your garden.
Sprinkle blood meal around your crops after each rainfall.
Other people have suggested inserting sticks of Spearmint gum, still in the aluminum foil wrappers, in the tunnels.
Now, let’s see if we have the picture. We have a lawn or garden soaked with castor oil, with shoes, socks and undershirts hanging from poles, surrounded by a fence with bright, flashing Christmas lights (day and night), ears of corn soaked in tar scattered around the ground, and a radio playing heavy-metal songs 24 hours a day.
Why do I have the feeling that this won’t work.
It might be great for a farm where the next neighbor lives five miles away. In our neighborhood, I can pretty much guarantee you that bright Christmas lights on a fence with clothes hanging on it and a radio playing (maybe Rush Limbaugh’s show would drive the animals away) would be considered a nuisance, and that’s putting it mildly.
Apparently, this advice is being offered on the basis of a do-no-harm to the critters philosophy. There are various traps and other devices available, including lethal concoctions, which can be effective in reducing the pest population. Of course, in neighborhoods if such tactics are to be used then utmost caution has to be exercised.
Personally, my choice is to avoid guns and knives in the battle against the lawn and garden invaders.
But there’s a very friendly black and white cat in the neighborhood that strolls through the backyard occasionally with an eye out for the tunnel builders.
In fact, the cat probably is the only effective, although lethal, defense against an all-out invasion.
There’s something to be said, however, for the smelly socks suggestion.
Anyone who recalls those high school gym locker odors will testify to that fact. Some of those rancid socks would peel paint from the walls.
Mike Ellis is the editor of the Herald-Standard. His e-mail address is: mellis@heraldstandard.com.