Monday, February 13, 2012
Hygiene
Bath smelt of swimming pools this morning. Must be one of those times when the water people shove a dose of chlorine through the (drinking) water to clear out a few bugs. Maybe they had a dirty leak somewhere.
While down the garden we have vermin. Readers may recall that the compost heap at the bottom of the garden has a lid on it. Not something we ever bothered with in Cambridge where the garden might almost have been in the country but we never had foxes digging into the compost, so there was no need to cover it with anything more grand than a bit of old carpet to stop the dry stuff at the top blowing about. Here in the suburbs however we have lots of foxes, not yet seen off by the shiny new beagle puppy next door.
And I like to put all our food waste on the compost on the grounds that one gets better compost that way. With the catch being that foxes like items like beef ribs, which they dig up, scattering bits and pieces far and wide in the process. So BH said no. It has to stop. So I put a lid on the compost heap, a lid which was last refurbished October 14th or so, 2010. And the lid did indeed keep the foxes out but it also created a haven for rats. It proved impossible to make the compost bin rat proof, so being fox proof, relatively warm, and full of food, from time to time one got rats. The evidence was mainly in the form of all the minced compost thrown onto the top of the heap from their tunnellings.
Last time this happened I got some rat poison, stuff that came in blue pellets and put it in a tray on the top of the compost. After a while we had one dead rat and no live rats. Problem went away for a bit. But I did get ticked off for using rat poison in the vicinity of cats, even though the cats could not get directly at the stuff.
And now we have rat or rats again. Much evidence of tunnelling and one morning there was even a sighting. First line of attack was to disrupt the tunnels by poking them out with a suitable pole, and quite big some of them seemed to be too. The thought was that rats are relatively clever animals and if I kept smashing up their tunnels, they would move on. But no luck. They seemed to keep going. Furthermore, they were probably eating all the red worms which make the compost tick, indeed, that might have been what they were tunnelling for.
Then I had another brain wave. Given that we are probably going to have foxes anyway, compost for them to poke around in or not, why not just take the lid off. The compost is quite soft and the foxes might dig the rats out in short order. And if not the foxes maybe the cats, cats not being too hot at digging but pretty good at sitting and waiting. So that is where the matter rests at the moment. Lid off.
I am also conscious that the council are now collecting food waste from the little green plastic buckets (with fox & rat secure lids) with which they have supplied us, although I have so far declined to play. But given that they are going to collect whether I play or not and that I understand that the food waste is put into some huge fermenter out of which they get some useful energy, rather than just blowing it into the air in the way of a compost heap, I suspect that it would actually be more eco overall if I were to play. This suspicion has yet to be translated into action but that day may soon dawn.
While down the garden we have vermin. Readers may recall that the compost heap at the bottom of the garden has a lid on it. Not something we ever bothered with in Cambridge where the garden might almost have been in the country but we never had foxes digging into the compost, so there was no need to cover it with anything more grand than a bit of old carpet to stop the dry stuff at the top blowing about. Here in the suburbs however we have lots of foxes, not yet seen off by the shiny new beagle puppy next door.
And I like to put all our food waste on the compost on the grounds that one gets better compost that way. With the catch being that foxes like items like beef ribs, which they dig up, scattering bits and pieces far and wide in the process. So BH said no. It has to stop. So I put a lid on the compost heap, a lid which was last refurbished October 14th or so, 2010. And the lid did indeed keep the foxes out but it also created a haven for rats. It proved impossible to make the compost bin rat proof, so being fox proof, relatively warm, and full of food, from time to time one got rats. The evidence was mainly in the form of all the minced compost thrown onto the top of the heap from their tunnellings.
Last time this happened I got some rat poison, stuff that came in blue pellets and put it in a tray on the top of the compost. After a while we had one dead rat and no live rats. Problem went away for a bit. But I did get ticked off for using rat poison in the vicinity of cats, even though the cats could not get directly at the stuff.
And now we have rat or rats again. Much evidence of tunnelling and one morning there was even a sighting. First line of attack was to disrupt the tunnels by poking them out with a suitable pole, and quite big some of them seemed to be too. The thought was that rats are relatively clever animals and if I kept smashing up their tunnels, they would move on. But no luck. They seemed to keep going. Furthermore, they were probably eating all the red worms which make the compost tick, indeed, that might have been what they were tunnelling for.
Then I had another brain wave. Given that we are probably going to have foxes anyway, compost for them to poke around in or not, why not just take the lid off. The compost is quite soft and the foxes might dig the rats out in short order. And if not the foxes maybe the cats, cats not being too hot at digging but pretty good at sitting and waiting. So that is where the matter rests at the moment. Lid off.
I am also conscious that the council are now collecting food waste from the little green plastic buckets (with fox & rat secure lids) with which they have supplied us, although I have so far declined to play. But given that they are going to collect whether I play or not and that I understand that the food waste is put into some huge fermenter out of which they get some useful energy, rather than just blowing it into the air in the way of a compost heap, I suspect that it would actually be more eco overall if I were to play. This suspicion has yet to be translated into action but that day may soon dawn.
# posted by Jim @ 1:40 AM 
