Parrothead Ramblings

Christina keeps a diligent, but worthless, eye on Margaritaville West.

I love animals. Pretty much all of 'em. Love 'em. Whether fish or fowl, mammal or reptile, doesn't matter. The ones I don't care to look at or pet, I like to eat. Hell, TFMCD and I even look for our little nocturnal Mediterranean geckos every night on our front porch. We'd name 'em if we could tell 'em apart. We even name inanimate objects that resemble animals. There's Bruce the Shark in our pool, Dan and Marie are the decorative cranes beside the pool, and Ladybug named the allegedly scary plastic owl "Christina."

And that's where the problem begins.

The owl doesn't work. Oh, sure, she sits there looking ferocious, scowling at all who dare enter her domain, but she just ain't scaring anybody. We have this yard-dwelling cat (and yes, I like cats just fine, so long as they are not within the walls of my home) named Road Kill. Years ago, I built her one of those cat tree things with the carpeting all over it. It sits on the patio, and we put her food on top of it so Scully The Parrothead Retriever can't snitch it. Scully has figured out that she can rattle it with her front paws and shake the cat food right off the edge and onto the patio, then pig out on the nasty stuff. I caught her at it a while back and chewed her ass out, and she stopped. That's a significant difference between cats and dogs, see? A cat wouldn't give a shit what my preferences were on such a topic. Scully does care. But I digress.

Road Kill is not the only critter who enjoys the sumptuous feasts on top of that cat tree. Birds, primarily grackles, treat it like their own private buffet. Grackles are some very smart birds. They often approach in pairs. One eats while the other keeps a lookout for Road Kill, then they switch out. If they're going solo, then they take it in stages:

Stage 1 - Sit atop the cinder block fence. Squawk like crazy, reconnoiter for opposing forces drawn to the sound.

Stage 2 - Land on the lawn. Walk around like you're just chillin', looking for bugs to eat. Note: This is a ruse, designed to make it appear as though they have a symbiotic relationship with you. Don't fall for it. They're just looking for an opening.

Stage 3 - Ingress. Jump from the lawn to my new grill. Recon the yard for hostiles. Here's where they make their intentions known, but are not yet willing to fully commit to the aggression.

Stage 4 - Jump from the grill to the cat tree. Take a few furtive glances around to insure opposing forces are a safe distance away, then mack out on Little Friskies.

Stage 5 - Egress. Haul ass outta there like your tail feathers are on fire.

I established a no-fly zone and took to shooting at offenders with a pellet gun last summer. Word got out on the street that you could get whacked if you screwed around in Crime Dog's yard, and they went away. But as soon as I agreed to a cease-fire, the little bastards started coming back. It's not bad enough that they steal the cat food, but they treat my patio like an outhouse. They take dumps on the patio, the cat tree, the patio furniture, and even my grill. TFMCD is not wild about the idea of me snuffing them, so I stopped for good.

That's where Christina comes in. We put this giant plastic owl near the cat tree, moving it every so often to keep the grackles off balance. That worked for a week or so, but now some of them actually use the damn thing for their Stage 3 ingress.

Every day, I'm cleaning grackle shit off all my stuff. I think some of them must eat cement. I don't know how to get rid of them without violence. Scully will bark and run them off, but only when I happen to be watching. She'll be sawing logs out on the lawn, hear the door open, then jump up as if to say Shit! Caught me sleeping on the job again! Then she takes off after birds, cats, or whatever other critters are around. I even saw her bark at a lizard once, on a slow day. God forbid she ever actually catches anything. I'd probably have to put her in doggie therapy. Road Kill is too old, too lazy, or a combination thereof to be a legitimate threat to Team Grackle.

So, what's a Crime Dog to do? I'm thinking about maybe building a device similar to the squirrel launcher I saw on El Capitan's blog a few days ago. If nothing else, it would be entertaining. Click here for a demo, it's funny in a semi-cruel sort of way. But the damned grackles would probably treat it like it was an adventure ride at Six Flags. Yo, Phil! You gotta check out this thing at Crime Dog's! Just fly over there, start eating the cat food, and hold on to your hackles, dude! What a RUSH!"

So, what's a Crime Dog to do? I'm open to anything, I just don't want to have to clean up a lot of gore. Shotguns and explosives tend to piss off the neighbors, as well as the local gendarmes, so those are out.

Anybody?

P.S. The squirrel launcher appears to have its source on a website owned by a guy named - and I'm not making this up - Richard Dudley. Nice going, Pirate Rick. I'll trade you a 12-pack for the trigger design.
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