errantember: (darth bobo)
2011-07-08 04:08 pm
Entry tags:

When Animals Attack!

I was just attacked by a squirrel.

I was at Mozarts, and there was a cute squirrel dirt-bathing in a nearby planter. I got out a piece of walnut, and held it out. Sure enough, the squirrel approached cautiously, took the nut, and proceeded to do the adorable, patented, "squirrel eating nut beneath bushy tail" routine.

That's when the horror began.

The squirrel, intrigued by this considerate new food source, decided to investigate more closely. Leaping to my table, it quickly homed in to the smell of the remaining walnut in my hand. It jumped over my laptop, landed in my lap, scrabbled up my arm, and tried to steal my nut. My impotent flailing narrowly prevented theft of the nut, but earned me a painful bite! I was then forced to shoo my assailant off of the table, which took substantially more intimidation than one would guess.

Brief research online suggests that getting rabies from a squirrel is pretty unlikely, and getting shots is only advised if the squirrel is clearly behaving strangely.

In this case, I asked for it.
errantember: (Little Cowboy Scott)
2011-07-01 12:04 pm
Entry tags:

Ant Farms

Acrobat ants are farming aphids, which they milk for sugary secretions, right here where I'm sitting on these flowers at Mozarts!
errantember: (Little Cowboy Scott)
2008-12-28 01:37 pm

Take That, Nature!

While wandering my back yard yesterday, my mother heard what could only be described as an ominous creaking noise. Upon further investigation, it was revealed that a huge branch of one of my ash juniper trees had partially broken at the crook of the tree, and was just *waiting* to come down, partly on my bedroom. The branch is about 30 feet long, and about 10 inches across at it's biggest point. I'm working on putting together the story of my co-op, so I decided to record the audio of the whole experience for use on the website. My roommate was just leaving, so I was without help for the rest of the day, and the situation was clearly dangerous enough to require immediate action.
Read more... )
errantember: (Default)
2007-12-19 09:08 am

Oops.

The Last Survivors!



So, despite the fact that, in Austin, we have *almost* no freezes during the year, the freezes we *do* have evidently still count. I personally think this is very unfair, except when it's conveniently killing fleas I haven't been able to exterminate any other way, because the amount of effort necessary to grow vegetables in a 365-day growing season is *WAY* less than in a 362 day growing season. The idea that some kind of random weather event can cause so much trouble when it happens so seldom does *not* sit well with me.

So, anyway, all five of my still-producing tomato plants were wiped out by two nights of sub-zero temperatures. These are all that are left. One new clone did survive, because of it's proximity to the soil, but likely I'm going to start over with better tomatoes anyway. The cherry tomatoes I got from Big Red Sun rocked, but the other two varieties were never all that vigorous.

My oranges and grapefruits are looking oranger and yellower all the time.