THE WAR OF SPRINGTIME

I was going to write something vaguely insightful about the war in 
Lebanon and the historical context of imperial power in the middle 
east, but I forgot it was spring, and as such I've got my own 
battles to fight. Forget the horrors happening on the other side of 
the globe, there's an invasion happening above my head!

Firstly I remembered to go out and check the shed for birds, 
Starlings I think, that have been getting in to nest there for 
years in spite of my determined efforts. They poo everywhere and 
then half their chicks die (it's not like they even do that well in 
there!) and you end up with rotting dead birds hidden all over the 
place, which in turn attracts mice and rats... It must have been 
over five years since it started. Back then the door didn't even 
close properly and I thought that would fix it. Now I've rebuilt 
the door frame, riveted sheet metal and/or mesh over all gaps I can 
find, wasted days spraying expanding foam in holes that they ended 
up just pecking out before I replaced it with timber and wire mesh, 
installed plastic hawks on a pole above the shed and inside (the 
pole just made a nice perch for them), and put an ultrasonic pest 
scarer  in the ceiling. Yesterday I installed flashing over the 
latest suspect place where they _might_ be getting in, by levering 
up some transparent panels on the side of the shed, although that 
theory already assumed some borderline defiance of gravity since 
they could only approach from underneath. Yet I went in there again 
this morning to be met by five birds, though at least I noticed one 
this morning flapping around the door frame looking lost. Since 
they're an introduced species it wouldn't be wrong to try poisoning 
them, though they seem to go elsewhere to eat and I don't really 
want more dead bird to clean out, plus poison always seems to be a 
temporary solution to pest control since there's still a way for 
others to get in later.

I'm aware of that due to the other battle in the spring wars, in 
which I discovered a new front while going out to check in the shed 
- the bees. For all the news about bees dying off from one thing or 
another, around where I live it's quite a different story. For the 
last few years there have been hives popping up everywhere, and 
annoyingly that includes the roof of my house. Although mercifully 
they're not very aggressive, I've heard tell that the weight of 
hives has caused ceilings to collapse, and in my case a bigger 
problem is that they keep dying in my guttering, which collects my 
house water and I end up drinking water full of dead-bee bits, 
which also clog up any sort of filter or constriction in the supply 
to everything water can come out of in the house. About the time 
last year that it started taking multiple pauses for cleaning the 
filter on my washing machine in order to complete a wash, I got my 
father to help me pull up much of the roof on the house, kill the 
bees with bug spray (yeah, poor bees, but my empathy for nature has 
its limits), and pull out the hives before filling the cavities 
with ceiling insulation (they got into the spots where there wasn't 
any insulation already). Unfortunately we didn't have enough time 
or ceiling insulation to fill all the empty spots, so left that for 
later. But one hive must have got down into the wall and survived, 
and now they're swarming from that into other parts of the roof.

I did buy some used ceiling insulation a week or two ago to try and 
get ahead of this, but apparantly I put the job of installing it 
off too long waiting for good time and weather. Now it's forecast 
to rain tonight (maybe) and much of next week (maybe), so not good 
to start pulling the roof off again now either. Back to living with 
the buzz for a while more then, I suppose. Except I've just 
gathered up all the bug poisons in the house to see if any are on 
this list, although the need to apply those above the gutter while 
ensuring I don't get poison in my drinking water probably rules 
them all out anyway:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide_toxicity_to_bees

At least mice have stayed out of the Jag for a while now, touch 
wood.

 - The Free Thinker