Category: Nature

Avoiding The Stink

House & Home, Nature

Pigs stink!  News at 11.

Here’s one that made me chuckle:

A farmer has been paid almost £1.5million of public money to stop rearing pigs to allow 5,000 new homes to be built.

The deal is part of a move to reduce the amount of harmful nutrients flowing into waterways in Norfolk and to get house-building moving again, in what is the first deal of its kind.

The pig farm is on either side of the A47 bypass south of Norwich. By closing it down, the reduction in pollution means that officials will be able to grant permission for 5,000 homes elsewhere in the county.

Never mind the reduction in pollution;  just having a pig farm within a mile of a new housing development would render the houses either unsellable, or else priced so low as to be unprofitable to build.

Farms are noisome things, to be sure, and it’s not just pig farms either.  Fully a third of Mr. Free Market’s country estate is almost unusable (well, for my citified nostrils anyway) because of a neighboring cattle farm.  And speaking of city slickers:

Well said.

Natural Suckage

Bad News, Nature, Tragedy, Travels

Whenever some natural disaster strikes a place where I’ve been before, there’s always a hint of a personal tragedy for me.  (I don’t think I’m any different from most people, of course, but there it is.)

Such is the case with Ahrweiler in Germany, which lies on the banks of the Ahr River right before it empties into the Rhine at Remagen, and it’s a town that has many happy memories for me.

I remember that when I was there, about a dozen years ago, I thought that I could easily live in Ahrweiler — the town is gorgeous (although come the summer every year it floods, only with tourists), but the scenery everywhere you look is just spectacular.

The Romans thought so too:  the mountainsides are festooned with grapevines dating back to those days, and there’s a large Roman villa outside the town that was only discovered a year or so before I got there.

Some pics I took when I was there:

And the town is shot through with drainage canals and pipes: 

…which didn’t seem to help much.

One would think that Ahrweiler’s proximity to the Rhine outlet would spare the town from flooding — especially as the town itself is ringed by a wall dating back to medieval times or earlier:

…but that didn’t happen this time:

The people of Ahrweiler received no warning of the impending crashing waves.

Leonie from Ahrweiler had the terrifying experience of watching the water destroy the city.  At about 11pm Leonie and her family had gone to bed, but before falling asleep she was disturbed by loud noises outside their home.

The electricity had gone out and it was pitch black. The only way they could see was with candles and flashlights.

She looked outside to notice that there was a lot of water running down the street, but didn’t realise the severity of the situation until the water level started to rise to her doorstep.  She woke up her mother and grandfather and they started to bring food and water upstairs.  However, the nightmare had just begun – a massive wave burst through the front door, obliterating everything in its wake.

I should point out that Ahrweiler lies at the very foot of the Ahr Valley, which starts way up in the Eifel Mountains.  It’s a steep drop from up there to the Rhine Valley below:

I hurt when I think about it.

Monster

Nature

Talking about spiders, there’s this new discovery:

The arachnid measures over 8 centimeters from foot to foot and has dark hair. The most impressive feature of the “megaspider” might be its fangs. The spider wields fangs that measure almost an inch long, and they reportedly have the ability to pierce a person’s fingernail.

Key word:  Australia.

Worse Than Californians

Hunting, Nature

Yeah, they’re a pestilence too:

It’s open season year-round on feral pigs, whose population in Texas has grown to nearly 3 million. Hunters are not required to retrieve carcasses, although there’s an incentive to do so: “wild boar” sells for up to 60 cents a pound.

If anyone’s organizing one of these hunts in the near future, let me know.  I have a new rifle that needs blooding.

Flying Rats

Nature

I think I’ve told this story before, but anyway…

When I was at The Englishman’s cottage in Cornwall, I had the rare pleasure of hanging out with the Sorensons (Mrs. Sor is “The Catholic” in Comments) for a couple days.  I walked down to the kitchen one morning to find Mrs. Sor sitting alone drinking tea.

“Where’s Himself?” I asked.
“Down by the harbor, feeding Tesco plastic bags to the seagulls.”

He hates seagulls, and so do I.

When I read this sorry tale, I just shook my head.

Monique Sveinsson, 46, from Cambridgeshire, was on a mini-break with her friend Emma Wilshaw when she was attacked by the hungry seagulls at Brighton beach on August 3.
The mother-of-two, who runs her own planner and diary company, described how the aggressive birds circled above her before launching themselves at her food and flying away with the chips.

There is a way to deal with these airborne rodents, and anyone who is going to the seaside (or anywhere seagulls are in abundance, e.g. the Great Lakes) should avail themselves of this advice.

  • Go to your local Goodwill or thrift store, and buy an old tennis- or handball racquet, the older and more battered (therefore cheaper) the better.  (Tennis is better, as it has a longer handle.)

  • Leave it in the trunk of your car.
  • Then, when going to any place where there are seagulls, take it with you.
  • When the gulls start to pester you, swat them like flies.

I had to live in San Francisco for a couple weeks on a client assignment, and my walk to the office from the hotel took me through a couple parks.  The fucking crows and seagulls didn’t just annoy me, they attacked me, pecking at my head.

So on the way back from the client I stopped at a junk store and bought a racquet.  Then when I  went to the park the next day, the little bastards attacked me again.  Miraculously, however, they stopped attacking me after I’d popped three of them out of the sky. (It’s just a little more strenuous than playing badminton.)

Some stupid Karen took offense and called the cops on me.  When the cop asked me what I’d been doing and I told him, he stifled a laugh and said, “I’m going to have to confiscate that weapon.”  Then he winked at me and said, “I’ve been wanting to do what you did for ten years.  Enjoy your stay.”  And he walked off, swinging the racquet like a billyclub.  I think he was daring the birds to attack him.

As with all my advice given on these pages, there’s a “you’re on your own if you follow it” warning.

But I have to tell you, it’s almost as much fun as shooting them with a shotgun.