bushes with legs, walls that go up then down, and sinking ships

[sergebroom]

It's that time of the year where the backyard gets its spring-cleaning. I manfully (and with the help of a chisel bar) tore out bushes that were on their last legs, and got the scratches to prove it.

There is a level spot on a slope where the plants have never done well because their retaining wall of stacked-up rocks had so many leaks that most of the water just flowed away so, this weekend, I removed said boulders and built a wall of neatly fitted bricks. Except that they aren't fitted well enough to prevent some water from seeping thru. The wall will have to come down, then back up again, with some thick plastic tarp on the inside. Oh well. Live and learn.

Besides that, we've been transfering some flowers from small pots to Sue's flower beds. Yesterday, after I watered the plants with some fertilizing mixture left over from the earlier gardening session, I noticed that, even though the plastic watering can had no juice in it, it felt heavier than it should. I peeked thru the narrow opening at the top.

And found a drowned rat inside.

Comments

[tania-c.livejournal.com]

ick and umm...extra fertilizer for the plants?

We did our spring yard tidy this weekend too. Only a few mosquito bites, and a few vole carcasses.

Do you think the rat was hiding from the Hounds of Serge?

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Either it was hiding from my Hounds, or it was looking for some water and couldn't find any, this being the desert.

Vole carcasses? Long deceased, I hope. Our aquatic rodent had thankfully passed away recently so no apparent putrefaction made it necessary to get rid of the watering can - vacating its tenant was sufficient. Last autumn, by the way, when we were cleaning the front patio, I found a dead dove lying hidden between flower pots. When I turned it over (with a trowel, of course), I could see some maggots squirming between its feathers. Yes, I did say "Gross!"

[tania-c.livejournal.com]

The voles were quite deceased, and really just dried out and slightly furry. I tossed them into the pile that will become my compost heap.

Maggots. yuck yuck yuck. I know they serve a necessary purpose, but they still make me squirm.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Coming soon... Curse of the Zombie Vole...

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

Forgot. At the height of one of the bird flu scares, I found a dead bird in our yard, just like your dove. I turned it in (http://www.linkmeister.com/blog/archives/001913.html) to the State Dept of Health, but...

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Let's see if I can top anything in the grossness dept that's already been posted here.

("Don't. Serge, please just don't.")
("But I must.")

I have indicated that the bus I sometimes take to the office often has some 'interesting' passengers, some of whom like to discuss their respective criminal records with each other. Last week, one guy came on board, blew his nose repeatedly. With his bare fingers. When he got off the bus, it was thru the backdoor. For reasons you can understand, when my stop came, I got off thru the frontdoor.

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

Ok, adding to the squick factor already prevalent, a few months ago I went into our shed and opened up the tool cart (one of those Craftsman things with six drawers and a lockable vertical bar). I opened up a drawer to find a tool of some sort and saw an odd looking bird-nesty kind of thing. Being fastidious, I grabbed a screwdriver and poked at it a little.

Yup. Dessicated rat.

How the hell it got inside a drawer is beyond my ken.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know how that happened.

Years ago, my first cat gave birth to a bunch of you-know-whats. As soon as they could move, they turned my appartment into their playground. One day, hearing suspicious noises coming from my chest's top drawer, I opened it and found a very happy kitten within. It had crawled up the chest's back, from the inside, and squeezed its way into that top drawer.