Groundhogs and yellow jackets

September 5, 2020

Dear diary,

If it not the groundhogs, it’s wasps and yellow jackets. Mom wanted vegetables from the yard so she planted some delicata squash. She didn’t realize this was a dinner invitation to the neighborhood groundhogs. So most of the summer has been spent trouble shooting how to share the abundance with these creatures. The groundhogs have the privileged behavior of nibbling in every single squash until they find the perfect one for their taste buds. Like the baby bear in Goldilocks. I guess groundhogs were never taught to finish their plate. So mom had to figure out how to deter these little pranksters. And she found that the groundhogs don’t like to work too hard for their meals. So when the internet told mom to cover the vegetables/fruits with mesh bags, she thought, brilliant!!! And now mom is able to share her bounty with the critters of the neighborhood.

Mom then became enamored with hummingbirds. So she started making as many hummingbird feeders as possible. Did I mention mom has a love for abundance? She found a wonderfully clever idea of using kikkoman soy sauce bottles as hummingbird feeders. Amazing. The hummingbirds love it. But so do the wasps and yellow jackets. Another bumbling buffet of critters that mom doesn’t want in massive hoards. So now mom is researching “bee guards.” It’s a little contraption that allows the long tongued hummingbirds to reach the sugar water, but deters wasps and yellow jackets from reaching the goods. You can smell it but you can’t touch it. Is this called window shopping? Sounds mean to me.

Mom is spending small bits of money to figure out a diy strategy for making her own “bee-guard.” I hate to tell her that she could just buy some small hummingbird feeders that already have that feature built into them. But mom is persistent in her desire to reinvent the wheel and is spending more money and time into creating something that isn’t actually working very well.

The ego of a human is a curious thing. Imagine wanting to spend so much resources in order to say “I did this all by myself.” As if this meant that they didn’t get any help. Which they did. Because everything comes from something that is beyond you.

I do remember mom talking about small distractions creating a sense of joy and a feeling of control in a chaotic world. A binky for adults I guess.

For a binky, diy hummingbird feeders aren’t too bad. At least she’s not drinking!

Love, Bob