I used to grow vegetables in a garden until the groundhogs showed up. I bought a “humane” box trap, but every time I caught one it would rip out its own claws trying to escape before I could dump the literally bloody critter a few towns over. I have no idea if their claws grow back, probably not. The whole routine was just too depressing so I gave the trap away and had the garden dismantled and plowed under. Now I buy vegetables at the local farmer’s market.

Grasshoppers liked my lettuce way too much. They can eat the plants outside of the net.

This year I grew some beautiful morning glories, moonflowers and black eyed susans using my porch banisters as a trellis. I sized and built the planter trays from scratch, I installed an automatic watering line with each partition havig its own mini sprinkler.

It looks picutreseque cottage core. Vines grow up and around the porch, pretty mixtures of flowers…

I killed so many slugs… so many goddamn ^fuckyouslugs (and beetles, ^{fuck you japanese beetles}) to make it happen…

I take photos of the insects, send them to my bird scientist friend, and she tells me if they are beneficial bugs or invasive or bad for the tomatoes. Only if they’re invasive or specifically bad for tomatoes do I squish.

I still have PTSD from 25 years ago when I killed two snails. I feel terrible about it.

I was on holiday with my first wife in France. We had this beautiful little cottage in the countryside. We went to bed at night and I wanted to close the shutters on the window, so we wouldn’t get waken up at the crack of dawn. But I noticed two large snails sitting on the windowsill outside.

They would be crushed if I closed the shutters. So I did this trick I learnt where I tapped on their shells with the tip of my finger. That tricked them into retreating into the shell. Then I gently applied force to get them off, waiting till they released themselves as to not hurt them.

I set them down on the side, waiting for them to get a grip. Once they were firmly in place I let go and checked they were doing alright. They started crawling away and I was satisfied I could safely close the shutters without harming them. After having done so, I got a good night sleep, perhaps the last good night sleep for the rest of my life.

The next morning I went to open the shutters, to let in the light and some fresh morning air. As I opened the shutters I heard this terrible crunching sound. I was absolutely shocked and my wife put her hand in front of her mouth, pointed at me and yelled: “SNAIL KILLER!”. As I slowly opened the shutters I found that indeed the snails had crawled back to a place in front of the shutters. As I opened the shutters, the snails were completely crushed leaving nothing but a sad pile of sadness.

Obviously I didn’t close the shutters for the rest of the stay. I still feel terrible to this day I failed my small fragile gooey friends. I try to make my garden as inviting as possible for all kinds of animals. And I don’t get a lot of snails, but there are a lot of other small and large critters. The God of Snails probably warns them to stay away, which is understandable.

I’m sorry snail friends, I’ll do better in the future.

gun

Come to my part of the world. You can’t have an unprotected garden out in the open. Deer will eat it, to the ground. Even “deer resistant” plants. To the ground. And it’s illegal to shoot them outside of a small window of time in the fall. They will destroy a garden far faster than any invertebrate I’ve ever encountered.

Mother nature is a brutal bitch, red in tooth and claw, who destroys what she creates.

—The Denial of Death

Love the purely geometrical gun, labeled

The pink thing is shooting a poop