Sunday, February 23, 2014

On the Cold Frontier

In my last post I discussed hairy, ravenous hordes using arctic weather to breach the defenses of civilization.  So it was in 406 with pillaging Germanic barbarians on the Rhine frontier.

And so it is in 2014 on the West Hill Front.


Bunnies.  Damn them.

Every winter I put up a three foot fence around some succulent shrubs.  The enemy has been lurking about waiting, waiting.  And the last snow fall was deep enough to let them just hop on over.


Inside the perimeter.  The object with a stem is a berry fallen off the tree above.  Pathetic, misinformed robins are feeding there and I do not begrudge them.  The objects without stems.  Well, not berries.

I am constrained by practical considerations.  Direct action might not be legal, although there is a little wiggle room for pellet guns. But They come by night.  So I tromped down a trench all around the fence, that should hold them for a while.  Unless it snows again.

In some ways this is less The Somme than the Korean DMZ.  Lots of fences (my request for barbed wire was turned down), but more psychological warfare than anything else.

It has been a decade or so since the Bunny commandos breached the wire.  Last time I made a cardboard cutout of a severed rabbit head, complete with a large X in place of an eye.  I mounted it on a pike as a warning.  It seemed to work, although spring thaw probably helped.

But while I think it bothered the Bunnies a bit, it bothered the Wife more, so I am confined to such engineering activities as will not greatly alarm the new neighbors next door.

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Regular posting schedule, M/W/Fri will return shortly.


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