Just checked my garden because I had harvest envy, and apparently the rabbits ate my damned peppers. Guess I need to get a fence and some fox piss.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Republicans in disarray!
Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.
Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.
And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.
Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.
Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.
Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard
Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.
Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.
“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”
Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!
They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!
So many bastards, so little time.
We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.
Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.
Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.
If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.
You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.
Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.
Everyone is in a bubble, but some bubbles model reality far better than others!
This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.
Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”
Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.
Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.
nitpicker
Marigolds around the garden. Do it.
debit
I will let you borrow my cat Luther, who used to live in my backyard before we made an honest cat of him. His nickname is Bunny, because that’s mostly what he’s made of.
Or you could just do what nitpicker said. It’s worked so far for me.
stuckinred
I built a fence with this Double Loop Ornamental Fencing. It’s only made in Texas and Iowa but it keeps the critters out.
Here’s the Texas firm
http://www.afence.com/store/home.php?cat=464
Bordo
Won’t human urine work? And I’ve heard the same thing about marigolds. Bunnies hate `em.
Zifnab
Don’t you have, like, two dogs and a plus-sized chair warmer? Can you just release the hounds?
Just Some Fuckhead
Human hair will work too. Hell, ya might try Tunch fur.
BombIranForChrist
When I gardened in Virginia, I tried all kinds of different techniques to get rid of varmints, and the only one that worked was a fence.
jharp
I picked my first 3 jalepenos today, Indianapolis. And Sorry to hear of your misfortune.
A fence will work. Don’t waste you time or money on Fox piss.
Also a pellet gun works. And rabbits are excellent eating.
jharp
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Folklore.
And don’t waste your time or money on mole killing scams either. Two ways to kill them. Traps and a shovel.
The poisons and repellents are total frauds. And they are selling lots of it.
John Cole
Yeah. It would be really nice if I had a cat that was a credible threat. Once they figured out he is largely stationary, then what?
QuaintIrene
Peppers, really? Flowers about to burst into bloom are the usual rabbit victims in my neck of the woods.
Putting down mothballs has worked for me at times. Downside-parts of your garden can smell like granny’s closet.
jl
Put Tunch in a little wagon and move him around the yard periodically. Play a recording of threatening cat predator sounds. Simple.
Zifnab
@John Cole: You have a JRT on loan, right? Boundless amounts of energy and the savage fury of a very angry midget. Toss him outside for the night.
mr. whipple
Our outdoor cat killed a rabbit yesterday, his second of the year. The only thing he left was a little pile of gut.
Feets, tail and head, he ate it all. Killing little fucker, he is.
Just Some Fuckhead
@jharp: Maybe, but the hair and fur are free. I personally don’t have a problem with rabbits in the garden because I’ve got a bunny capturing and killing machine masquerading as a domesticated cat. I do have a problem with rabbits in the house though.
NobodySpecial
@jl: Cole was bad enough with a busted shoulder, do you REALLY want him to blog after he has a stroke?
MTmofo
I saw a comment over at the GOS that recommended pouring ammonia around the perimeter of the garden. The veggie predator in question was squirrels, but it may apply to wascally wabbits.
Mike S
Doesn’t that make them pre-seasoned rabbits?
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
You could see it as a plus. Rabbits are delicious. I recommend this recipe http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/rabbit_in_mustard_sauce/
Also http://therabbitrevolution.com/butchering-and-eating-rabbit/
I have a friend who kills rabbits in his garden and gives me the overflow. Yum.
stuckinred
Claymores and phu-gas will help.
snowbird42
I just picked two almost ripe tomatoes because I could see squirrel jaws chomping down on them.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
The day after the deer raided my double fenced mator garden last year, I saw the guilty fuckers standing nearby, chewing their cuds, one and all, with fiendish grins.
Colonel Danite
Dog fur spread around the perimeter of the garden worked for us. Of course some neighbors insist that a high powered BB gun is the only solution.
Anoniminous
Most people raise green peppers or red peppers or, here in New Mexico, lots and lots of chili peppers.
Never heard of or tasted damned peppers. Where did you get the seed?
Mike Kay
This is all Obama’s fault.
stuckinred
@Anoniminous: Hatch!
Mike Kay
We need comprehensive rabbit immigration reform, but Rahm is blocking it.
Martin
I say you take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
MikeJ
The garden has been for weeks but THE BUNNIES ARE STILL COMING! Do something about it!
calling all toasters
Bunnies –>Obligatory Buffy link.
Keith G
I hear a vuvuzela works.
MikeJ
@calling all toasters: What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
Leonard Stiltskin
Used to lose all my flowers to rabbits. Someone suggested a mixture of dish soap, fresh garlic, and cayenne pepper. Mix with water in a spray bottle and spray the leaves every couple of weeks or after a rain. Haven’t lost any flowers this year at all.
The Other Chuck
@Keith G:
Blowing a vuvuzela is as likely as not to make the neighbors look up pest control methods to get rid of *you*
Comrade Mary
You just need an adorable pet fox with floppy ears who will bark at you and ask to have its tummy rubbed before it widdles all over your garden perimeter. Only $5000, shipped directly from Siberia.
Shalimar
Rub it on yourself and you will be in character for the special audience participation midnight showing of Red Dawn.
Mike Kay
BunnyGate: Day 1
Another Bugs Bunny style Shakedown.
MikeJ
One thing that will take them out: F/A-18 Hornet. Maybe not that one though.
For Father’s Day yesterday, I drove Dad down to Olympia for the airshow they were having. The F-18 took off to do his demonstration, and then the pilot noticed an exterior panel open. (right below the cockpit in the pic). He was too heavy to land, and McChord was shut down for rain and fog. Why a Navy plane couldn’t make an instrument approach at an AFB I don’t know, but I was standing next to the comms guys, and that’s what they were telling the pilot.
They sent him out over the sound, let him burn off fuel for a half hour and he landed safely with no drama at KOLM.
Mike Kay
This garden is a giveaway to the Bunny industry.
CaptMaggie
True story. Big joke in the house concerns a bb gun, an Elmer Fudd hat and wascally wabbits. Came home from work tonight and saw a bb gun on the table. Joked to husband that he was hunting the wascally wabbits. He mumbled something about hassenfeffer. Much later, he says you should have seen the little sucker jump when I hit him in the ass. Yikes! Time to hide the toys.
Colleen DeLaney
Liquid Fence works for me and my yard is crawling with deer. Works for rabbits, too.
It’s organic and, most importantly, absolutely harmless to pets.
It smells really bad (rotten eggs bad) the first few hours, so I spray it on at dusk.
Deer and rabbits hate the taste and will go find an easier garden to raid.
No taste goes into the food..again, it’s safe and 100% effective.
Litlebritdifrnt
I guess dog pee works as a preventer cause I have not had any problem with deer, or rabbits, or any such critter with my garden. Speaking of rabbits however, my Uncle and Aunt served
http://www.greatbritishkitchen.co.uk/recipebook/index.php?option=com_rapidrecipe&page=viewrecipe&recipe_id=822&Itemid=28
in their restaurant and it was loved.
Stacy
I do fox piss, in a convenient spray bottle. I’ve had good luck with it, and it’s a lot less work then setting up a fence.
I have a pine tree in my yard that a bunny has taken fondly to. You’d think, after so many times of being chased out of that tree by my dog, the bunny would cease to come around. There are only so many scratches on one’s back from running under the chain link fence one could take, you’d think. It’s painful to watch her. But no, oh no, this is super bunny, and she likes her pine tree, and she’s staying, no matter if she has no more fur on her back come fall.
You know, I used to like bunnies. All cute and fluffy-eared and doe-eyed. Now that I have a garden, not so much. I realize now that they are evil incarnate.
(Although with that said, I refused to kick said bunny out of his pine-tree home during the winter like my husband recommended, because where would he go? He’d get cold.)
Mike Kay
@stuckinred: that’s a little extreme, I’d go with punji pits.
stuckinred
@Mike Kay: Rub the punji’s with water buffalo dung then.
The Dangerman
How do you get enough Fox piss to work? Leave out a 12 pack of Bud for them?
HRA
We have bunnies romping around ever year. I have 8 huge flower beds and they haven’t touch any flowers. Of course, my veggie garden is on the gated deck.
I thought the bunnies would have gone for the broccoli. When I did have a veggie garden on the ground, they went for the lettuce and cabbage. They never touched the peppers.
debit
I interrupt this garden talk to announce that I have made the best dinner ever; pork terrine with a side of tabbouleh, sourdough bread and sharp cheddar cheese. I may never stop eating.
I now return you to your topic of the day: fox pee.
mr. whipple
Make everyone at the network, from O’Reilly on down, piss in cups and collect it.
Mike Kay
@debit: elitist. you forgot your arugula and Belgian endive.
Violet
Well, that’s stinks. I hate it when something steals my vegetables after I’ve worked so hard to grow them.
A relative of mine traps the rabbits and then drowns them. She has no sympathy for the garden-ruining buggers.
Kristine
@calling all toasters:
Love obligatory Buffy links!
John Cole
I’m not going to skin and eat them.
I am warming to the idea of a pellet gun and a deck of cards. I’ll shoot them and leave a death card on the corpse as a warning to the others.
And since everyone here knows I can’t kill animals, I’ll probably just get a fence.
WereBear
@Violet: Good Gawd. I’m a gardener myself, when I had the land, but why doesn’t she just extradite them to Uzbekistan or something. That’s bloodthirsty.
Just shoot them! Pass the hat and I’ll pay for it!
Honus
I’d stop buying dog and cat food until the rabbits are gone. Should take about three days.
Of course, I’m a guy with about 175 pounds of dogs (one 1/2 Rot-shepherd and one half husky-shepherd) whose garden got eaten by deer last year, so…
They’re both so gentle they thought the deer were cute.
Violet
@WereBear:
She lives next to a working farm. They come onto her property from the farmer’s field. There are a gazillion rabbits in the field next to her property and they come through the fence daily. As this relative does not live in the US, the restrictions on guns make it a little harder for her to shoot them.
If you sit in their sunroom and watch the fence, you’ll probably see three or four rabbits come through the fence in the course of an hour. With numbers like that, she’s lost sympathy for them.
Ohmmade
The previous post was my harvest from our frontyard garden this morning. My girlfriend and I have a house in Los Angeles and she being a licensed Victory Gardener has transformed a turf of a plot into an amazing bounty of awesome. I’m sending more pics to John and maybe he’ll post a little blog about our little urban farm here. It’s all organic and a lot of heirloom varietals and native plants & flowers
ps: don’t diss her zucchinis!
robertdsc
@John Cole:
How about a scarecrow with a Tunch “FEED” apron? Tunch’s gimlet eye should strike fear into any non-family critter.
Violet
@Ohmmade:
That’s a really impressive garden bounty. Kudos to your girlfriend on her excellent gardening skills! Can’t wait to see more photos. Does she have a blog about her garden?
Turgid Jacobian
@Violet: she in Oz?
Mike Kay
Clip of Cole massacring the bunnies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwPRRSiUWzQ
SiubhanDuinne
@Leonard Stiltskin #33:
*Someone suggested a mixture of dish soap, fresh garlic, and cayenne pepper.*
“It’s a detergent!”
“It’s a gravy!”
Stop fighting, you two. It’s new Meaty-Clean — a gravy *and* detergent in one handy squeeze bottle.
“Wow! My dishes have never been so shiny!”
“And just taste those exotic spices!”
/SNL (or Firesign Theatre, one)
MikeJ
@Mike Kay: The best bunny massacres are set to Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.
tim
I’ve had good luck with the coyote/fox pee. Hangs in little plastic bottles with holes in them around the perimeter and inside the garden: seems to work.
SiubhanDuinne
@Colleen DeLaney #41:
*It smells really bad (rotten eggs bad) the first few hours, so I spray it on at dusk.*
Okay, Colleen, I need to get new reading glasses, because as god is my witness I first read that as “I spray it on a duck.”
Ruckus
@Mike Kay:
Watched Elmer. Good stuff. But.
At the end the next video was Wile Coyote gets the RR.
Can’t say it’s best video ever, but it’s close.
stuckinred
@SiubhanDuinne: Maybe you meant Crystal Gravy? SNL 93
stuckinred
@SiubhanDuinne: Why a duck?
arguingwithsignposts
Lady Smudge, laboring under the gawdawful humidity that is Illinois weather right now, asks I can haz wabbitz?
Colleen DeLaney
@SiubhanDuinne:
Our neighbors had ducks that waddled over on a regular basis, and I guarantee it doesn’t work on them!
Nothing works on ducks. NOTHING!!
SiubhanDuinne
@stuckinred #67: I think I’m thinking of Shimmer (“It’s a floor wax!” “It’s a dessert topping!”) (“Mmmm, creamy and delicious.” “And just look at that shine!”)
@stuckinred #68: I don’t know. I’m a stranger here myself.
TaMara (BHF)
In case there was any doubt, Thursday Night Menu will NOT be bbq rabbit.
TaMara (BHF)
@Comrade Mary: Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I got the giggles thinking of you looking at one picture and me looking at another and somehow shaggy and drool making perfect sense to both of us.
Triassic Sands
@John Cole:
A fence is the way to go. Killing rabbits for eating plants is absurd. Nothing says you have to allow them to eat your veggies, but it is both unnecessary and repugnant to kill them for doing what they do naturally.
SiubhanDuinne
@aws #69:
I’ll see your Illinois weather and raise you some Georgia.
Loves me some Lady Smudge, although poor thing, she does look a little on the warm side.
AWS, I don’t think I knew that you were in Illinois. Which end of the state? I ask because I’m making a rare visit this fall to my home town of Oak Park (50th high school reunion, bitchez!) and would love to do a meet up with any BJ-ers in the area (I think I had a vague and noncommittal discussion about this with ellaesther several months ago — time to revive that conversation). Anyhow if you are anywhere in Chicagoland (writ large) in mid-October, I would love to get together for coffee, a drink, whatever. Agenda still fluid but I am beginning to lock things in so would love to know.
MikeJ
@stuckinred:
Let’s say you’re out riding your horse, and you come to the river and want to ford over…
Loneoak
Not to play a concern troll here, but I can’t imagine how they get fox piss without keeping an awful lot of foxes in cages. I’d bet dollars to donuts the urine comes from fur farms and you sure as hell wouldn’t wear those furs. Don’t use it, it’s got to be a product with a huge cruelty footprint.
Anne Laurie
@Comrade Mary:
Closer to $6K. But on the other hand, the site says West Virginia is one of only 9 states that doesn’t have specific restrictions on owning “exotic animals”. And I remember an article about a couple of New Hampshire animal behaviorists who successfully used a pair of “pet” coyotes to discourage predation on their sheep flock… apparently coyotes respect each others’ territories enough that the wild guys didn’t cross the ‘scent line’ left by their human-habituated peers.
jharp
Reading thru the comments reminds of golfing in Palm Springs some time ago.
I swear to God we’d see 50-100 rabbits per hole. No shit.
My friend ran one over in a golf cart without trying. On the cart path.
Coyote heaven. And the coyotes are another excellent solution.
jharp
@Loneoak:
“I can’t imagine how they get fox piss”
Me neither. About 35 years ago I opened a vial of fox piss in my parents home. I was 15.
And it nearly stunk us out of the house. And I didn’t spill it, simply opened it.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
We will be not only in Chicagoland, but in Oak Park … in August. D’oh!
Hawes
I hear you can Megan Fox’s urine on Chinese E-Bay.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne #81: Could I persuade you to stay on for another couple of months? :-)
Am curious to know (if you don’t mind saying), what’s the O.P. connection? I was born and raised there, as were both parents and all my siblings, so there’s a strong bond but haven’t actually had any family there since 1978.
Please don’t answer if this is veering too close to the personal.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
G’s family is in Oak Park. My family is more North Shore, ranging from Northbrook to Waukegan.
And yet G and I met in California. Go figure.
Gus
My dogs did a number on a nest, killed two baby bunnies. I stopped them before they killed the last one. I’m sure I’ll regret it when my beans are eaten down to the ground, but I felt bad for the little buggers.
SiubhanDuinne
@Loneoak #77: Yes, thank you for saying that. Same for bunnies and deer next thread up. (I happen to like Thumper and Bambi and Br’er Fox. So sue me. I don’t have any intention of getting into a PETAanimalrightsfurfoodleatherhumanetrapsgunsmeatcosmetictestinggardenpestsoverpopulation flame war. Too bleedin’ ‘ot. But there’s absolutely no need for gratuitous cruelty.)
Dave Trowbridge
Please don’t try fox piss, or any other predator urine. It’s “harvested” in a very inhumane manner (extreme abdominal pressure to induce urination).
Better to invest in some chicken wire around your garden begs, or some good quick-kill traps. Or Havaharts, if you must, but trapping and releasing just prolongs the misery, since wherever you let the rabbit go will already have its quote of rabbits, and someone’s going to starve.
I don’t have to deal with rabbits; raccoons are the problem here, and the only thing that worked for them was an electric fence–and not one of those wussy pet fences either, but a full-on stock fence (BTW, electrified chicken wire worked better than the braided wire). I left enough room for quail to run underneath it.
the farmer
@41 It smells really bad (rotten eggs bad)
It is rotten eggs. Rotten eggs and garlic mostly.
Best thing to do with young pepper plants (or other young plants) is to cover them with wire mesh baskets. You can often find them for sale at dollar stores. They’re basically wire mesh wastepaper baskets but they make great covers for young plants. They’ll keep the animals out and let the rain in. Also provide protection from hail. Works until the plants outgrow the baskets.
You can also make you own “cages” to place around the plants from something like hardware cloth.
You should also slip a large plastic cup around new pepper transplants (cut the bottoms off 6oz or 12oz plastic cups and slip em over the plant burying the cup into the dirt a little at the base of the plant) the cup will keep cutworms away and might discourage mice or bunnies or a groundhog as well. If you put a fence around the garden don’t use the plastic mesh fencing – the bunnies will chew holes right through the plastic.
*
asiangrrlMN
@jl: Oh my god. I would pay good money to see this!
@Ohmmade: Your girlfriend must really have a green thumb. Everything looked so good.
@arguingwithsignposts: Awwww, Lady Smudge does look a trifle wan in that picture. Still gorgeous, though.
asiangrrlMN
P.S. Bunnies, BUNnies, BUNNIES! (Per Anya from Buffy. Love that soundtrack. I own that soundtrack!).
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: DUCK SEASON!!
Ahh c’mon, someone had to do it!
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Why? I don’t remember that from that Buffy episode!
ChrisB
Predator strike on the rabbits. The collateral damage to your garden will be unfortunate but unavoidable.
You’ll have to destroy your garden to save it.
@stuckinred:
Why a no chicken?
bjacques
Cruelty-free tip: Find a chocolate bunny, skin it and hang it on the fence as a warning. Chocolate bunnies being hollow, you’ll have nothing left but air, so I guess the deterrent value is pretty low.
I understand Acme have a fine range of products for getting rid of varmints.
low-tech cyclist
@stuckinred:
You try to cross over there a chicken, and you’ll find out why a duck. It’s deep water, that’s why a duck.
Mary
Wait a minute….didn’t you JUST adopt a Jack Russell Terrier???? Just let Rosy out into the garden at regular intervals and you should be fine.
HeartlandLiberal
Go to Amazon (boycott Ebay), and buy yourself a battery operated, motion detecting water scarecrow.
http://www.amazon.com/Contech-Electronics-CRO101-Scarecrow-Motion-Activated/dp/B000071NUS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1277208153&sr=1-1
I particularly like the above page, because it has a page of the scarecrow squirting the Pope. Works for me.
Anyway, five years ago deer discovered our garden, and ate all the tomatoes. The next year, I installed the water scarecrow. Ever since, WE eat the tomatoes.
Sorry about your peppers. I have 18 bell paper plants starting to set peppers, plus two orange and one red habenero. In a few weeks, I hope to make homemade salsa with the habeneros.
bcinaz
Never mind the fence, wabbits can tunnel, plant a patch of clover or some other yummy rabbit treat for the rabbits to enjoy, instead of peppers.
DPirate
…or a shotgun. Then you still get to eat your peppers.
John Cole
@Triassic Sands: I agree. Although the rabbits were never in any danger.
I don’t kill things. I grow things and feed things.
Sheila
The rabbits in my yard ate my marigolds. Maybe the rabbits should put up a fence to keep humans out since we tend to take every inch of land in our vicinity.
Bill H
When I had rats in the garage someone suggested I turn the cat, Molly, loose in the garage to deal with them. Yeah, right. She is 80% vegetable. They would have her for lunch.