Earwig Go, Earwig Go, Earwig Go!

 

I am only one of the many creatures who inhabit these six acres, all the rest of whom no doubt regard me as a dangerous interloper rather than the rightful owner.  The vast majority are of course too small to see, the bacteria in the soil, water and air. The insects, the next most numerous, are particularly abundant at the moment; bumble bees and other less bumbly bees sniff inside my nasturtium flowers; hoverflies, butterflies, mayflies, horse flies and house flies, and all the rest of the winged establishment flit about in an endless polka (I think that's what they're doing although I can't quite hear the music). The burrowing and crawling things, the worms, the ants, the beetles go about their business, mostly uninterrupted by me.  Birds of many kinds swoop, sing, fight, eat and sleep. Young pheasants are everywhere, having been brought in by the gamekeepers. Frogs patrol the polytunnel. Slugs, both large and tiny, still keep on having a go at my crops despite my nightly raids. I saw a rabbit dash past, the first time I've seen one here – a bad omen as they love to eat our crops.

Tomatoes are growing but not yet ripening

The two beasts though that are currently topping my list of worst offenders, those which are perhaps inadvertently causing the most damage to my plants, are the mouse and the earwig.

A rather spiky cucumber

It is very likely that these particular mice have been living here for generations and I have quite rudely come and dug up their home and rearranged it into long straight mounds. Why should they move off and fight for new territory elsewhere? No, they just keep on burrowing through the earth, but unfortunately now the vegetable seedlings above are knocked sideways and their roots are left dangling in the tunnels unable to find nutrients whilst the plant above withers. I expect they are eating some roots too, I certainly would if I were them.

"Crown Prince" pumpkin

So being unable to reason with them I have unfortunately had to resort to extreme measures and laid a death trap baited with cheese and jam. (I know there are such things as live capture traps but I would have to then take the captured mouse a long way away and release it, possibly several times as there are definitely more than one. My compassion doesn't extend that far.)  I did catch one back in June while I was away at Pilsdon but have had no luck since, despite numerous new tunnels being made, until yesterday morning when I discovered a second limp mouse within its jaws.  The tide of the battle is turning.

Runner beans growing. You can see the snipped-off stems on this branch

Earwigs on the other hand I have only just realised I have to regard as my enemy due to their preference for climbing up runner beans at night and snipping off the flowers, just for the sheer malicious joy of it as far as I can tell. My suspicions had been hovering over the slugs or possibly birds until I discovered these nasty critters hiding in the runner bean flowers, and a friend with an internet connection filled me in. The ground is littered with never-to-be-realised runner bean flowers; luckily there are lots of them still on the plants but I have taken to combining my nightly slug patrol with earwig patrol. The other way to get them apparently is to build lots of earwig hotels in the shape of straw-filled pots and hope to catch them there asleep in the morning. When you have just a few bean plants this is probably a good idea, but to make enough hotels to cover a twenty metre section of bed containing two hundred plants and then check them all each morning seems a tad wearisome to me, especially if they may choose to sleep elsewhere anyway.

French bean

I am typing this after a delicious meal of grilled pheasant breast. This one had somehow got into my garden enclosure, as others occasionally have. My tactic is to corner them, wait till they've stopped flapping, pick them up and take them out. So I did exactly the same with this male bird, which was repeatedly flying against the plastic fencing and bouncing off, but I think it must have died of fright, or shame. I put it out and it just collapsed. A few minutes later I found it had crawled into the undergrowth and died. Sad, but I had been thinking recently it's been a while since I've had any meat. 



Dinner

 

Dinner