April 13th, 2007
I’m headed out tomorrow to mulch some more branches, sticks and twigs with my new Mighty Mack Mulcher…
I bought this baby back in the fall to help deal with the constant avalanche of debris from the woods surrounding our home. Not satisfied with just ANY mulcher, I headed down to Lusby Hardware to consult with Morris about what would be a nice, ladylike mulcher that could do some serious damage to hardwood.
Morris fixed me up with the Mighty Mack. It weighs 300 lbs, can chew up branches up to 3″ in diameter like they were #2 pencils and it also has an electric start. Just push the button and–Voila!–she starts! (There are a bunch of other technical specs that I could quote, but this is not an engineering blog, so I will refrain.)
When I ordered the machine, Morris said, “The first time you drop in some twigs, it’s going to sound like the world is coming to an end! So be prepared.”
How right he was. But I wasn’t prepared for all the smoke and sparks!
Yep. On its maiden voyage, I was mulching up leaves we had raked back in the fall. Things were going along swimmingly and I was down to my last bag when there was a little technical difficulty. The stick I had been using to stir up the leaves to keep them from getting compacted and jamming up the mulcher went too far into the machine.
Oh, my God. The noise! The smoke!
That baby started to moan and groan so loudly, I backed up a few feet in case it blew. I kept thinking that it would work its way through its difficulties and we could get on with our business. But no! It just got worse. Suddenly, a CLOUD of smoke was POURING out of the machine, which was lurching and grinding and making the most hideous of noises. Of course, by this time, I was AFRAID to go near the machine cause I was pretty sure she was gonna blow.
Then the fire started. Okay, maybe not fire, but sparks that LOOKED like fire. I was really not going near the machine now.
Unfortunately, I was in a real dilemma. The machine didn’t stop of its own accord and there was no able-bodied man around to brave the beast, as they had both de-camped to the movies and left me to do the yard work by myself. (Figures.)
So I screwed up my courage and scampered over, switched it off and grabbed the key. I scrambled back to my hiding place by the fence.
Whew! Major explosion and forest fire averted!
The bad news is that after just an hour or so of work on its virgin cruise, the Mighty Mack had to head off to the small equipment hospital.
So, on top of the purchase of a mulcher that equaled about 1,000 bags of mulch I could purchase, I had to pay a $250 repair bill.
I’m going to need to grow a LOT of vegetables to make this equation balance.
April 12th, 2007
Glug…glug…twerp twerp! Glug…glug…twerp twerp! What a strange sound for a bird. After doing some research, we found that the song was that of the brown headed cowbird–the bullies of the bird world!
The brown headed cowbird is a medium sized bird with a shiny black body and a brown head. The name comes from the fact that they often hang around livestock that kick up the ground, unearthing bugs and such that provide the bird with food.
But despite this dopey pastoral name, the cowbird is actually quite aggressive and they are the only parasitic bird that is common in Maryland. (There are about 750 types of parasitic birds worldwide.) Each spring, they forego the usual nest building ritual of other birds and instead deposit their eggs into the nests of other birds. What’s more, a recent news article reported that if the “host” bird refuses to feed and raise the baby cowbird, the mamma and daddy cowbird go back and TEAR UP THE NEST of the hostbird.
Mon Dieu! Mafia birds in my back yard! Eating my birdseed!
We have observed that they also seem to travel in mean little cowbird packs and shove around the chickadees. I’m going to give them biker names–Boris, Crazy Eddie, Weird Frank, Pissant and Smoker. I can hear them plotting their assaults…
“Yo, Crazy Eddie. Tell that lady to fill these flippin’ feeders before I get mad and do sumtin’ she’s gonna regret.”
“Hehehe, you’re the boss, Boris. I’ll get the guys and we’ll do a flyby of her Acura. Give her a small deposit of what she can expect if she don’t sees things our way.”
“You bird brains! To really get her attention, you need to show some muskle. Go for the little dogs! I’ll get the fluffy one. Youse guys take out the little silky one. We’ll see if she wants to mess with us guys!”
It’s a harsh world out there.
Posted In: Nature and Wildlife
Hi! I'm Robin Ripley author of Wisdom for Home Preservers, published by Taunton Press. I am also co-author of Grocery Gardening. Bumblebee is about my life in rural Maryland, my garden and my love of food, my little dogs and pet chickens. You can follow me on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. Thank you for visiting!
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