How to Get Skunks Out of Your Basement and Yard

March 19, 2014

Basements and crawl spaces under houses make idea dens for urban critters. If we could charge rent for all the skunks, raccoons and feral cats that have taken up residence under the house we’d have paid off the mortgage by now. Our particular crawl space critter B&B was opened by virtue of a flimsy access door. Some animal, most likely a raccoon, pried it open. The problem with this situation is that you can’t just close up the door. Some poor cr...

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How to Keep Skunks Out of the Yard

Mr. Homegrown

March 11, 2014

Gardening, Pests

17 Comments

...here’s a concrete slab. But there are a few weak spot where skunks can dig under the fence. I knew of at least two places that were open, critter highways into our backyard. At these two spots I bent some hardware cloth into an L shape, attached the top part to the fence and partially buried the lower part in the ground. I also closed an awkward gap in a fence we share with a neighbor. Finally, I sheathed the chain link gate to the backyard with w...

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Print and Internet Resources for Natural, No-Treatment Beekeeping

Mr. Homegrown

March 5, 2014

Animals, Bees

8 Comments

...’ll find a range of ideas in these books and websites particularly when it comes to hive types–everything from Langstroth boxes to top bar hives to hollowed out logs. What matters more than the type of hive you use is having a long range view and a recognition that too much intervention leads to the sort of antifragility Taleb is concerned about. Your local club or beekeeping association may or may not be open to natural techniques. It could be di...

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Are We Keeping Too Many Bees?

Mr. Homegrown

October 25, 2013

Bees

10 Comments

...l beekeeper Michael Bush has many good reasons for not feeding bees except under certain limited circumstances. One of the unintended consequence of feeding bees is that you could easily contribute to an overpopulation problem. It would be better to let populations decline and stabilize, in my opinion. One good thing that might come out of London’s alleged bee overpopulation problem, that the article points out, is that the situation might prompt...

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An Overdue Update on Phoebe

Mrs. Homegrown

July 30, 2013

Animals, Cats

16 Comments

...rk, loves to savage the fishing pole toy, and is diligently destroying the underside of our sofa. The sofa is her great work, an evolving art piece about the nature of entropy. She will have a short lifespan, though. The drugs just buy her a little time. Dr. Zimmerman told us the oldest cat she knew with Phoebe’s rare condition made it to four years old. Phoebe has already passed her second birthday. I’ve noticed her breathing sounds a bit wet lat...

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