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Fresh From The Farm: Angry Birds, 'Hunting Dogs

By Annette Codding

    The flow from the garden has slowed down a lot, but there is still a trickle of things to eat coming in. Lately, I have been picking okra, cucumbers and figs daily. In fact, the okra and figs seem to want to be picked twice a day. Skip a day on the okra and they are too big and get tough and fibrous. Skip a day on the figs and they split and the ants and beetles get in them.
    So, I take the basket out in the morning and pick, then again just before sunset. I had to put bird netting up over the fig tree as the mockingbirds have been poking holes in and eating the figs. It is a bear to handle and I wasn’t able to get it completely covered, but it should deter them a little.
    I am assuming it was the mockingbirds since they are always around the garden. They sure do make a racket and all kinds of sounds mimicking other birds. I heard what I thought was a new bird the other day at the barn so I got out my phone to use the Merlin bird app to identify it based on the sound. It said I had a Great Crested Flycatcher, but then it quit recognizing it as that bird, even though the bird kept singing. My friend and I figured it must be a mockingbird.
    I do know that the mockingbirds will squawk and dive bomb you if you hold its baby. I experienced this first-hand last week. Oh, the weird things that I learn here. Last Saturday evening I was out walking and saw some pretty sunflowers in the garden and wanted to pick them for my kitchen table. While I was in there, the dogs started “rat hunting” in the cover crop. It is not unusual to have mice or rats come to a garden. At first, I ignored them (the dogs, not the rats) but they were so cute pouncing and jumping around that I stopped and stood back and watched just for the sheer entertainment of it all.
    Brian was driving by the garden so I flagged him down and asked him to come watch with me. Either the man truly thinks the dogs are funny and cute too, or he just likes to indulge me by keeping me company while I watch them frolic. They were doing their thing, running back and forth, pouncing through tall peas, sunflowers and millet, and just generally acting out of control and a little crazy. Then Brian actually spotted the rat! It ran from the tall patch of cover crop to the overgrown flower bed at the front. I hollered at the dogs and the hunt was truly on.
    That rat did a pretty good job at evading the dogs for a few minutes there. In fact, I am pretty sure the only reason any of us actually knew which section he was in, was because Brian was diligently watching instead of acting crazy in the bushes with the rest of us. Every time the rat would run to a new section, he would point us in the right direction and we would start hunting again.
    This went on for about 10 minutes until that darn rat ran across my foot. I shrieked and all the dogs took the hunting to a new level and dove under the Pineapple Guava and started scuffling around. After a few seconds I heard a new noise and figured they got the rat. I called them out and Honey did have something, just not a rat. She had a half-grown baby mockingbird that was crying for its momma. And boy was that momma coming to the rescue. She divebombed me as I took the bird from Honey and tried to set it back in the bush.
    Of course, it fell but I am pretty sure it scurried to cover or just hunkered down. Honey went back after it, but unless she instantly swallowed it whole, it must have gotten away. Two seconds later, she was back on the rat hunt with the rest of the pack. We hardly ever get skunked on a hunt, but I had almost called it quits when a tired and much slower rat ran out of the cover crop once more. It was so slow that I was able to whack it and pin it to the ground with a bamboo stake. Finally!
    The dogs didn’t know it was over and continued to run about and managed to run past me and the rat three times before Honey smelled it and chomped it. He promptly bit her back and she yelped and let go for a second, but then caught it again. She killed it and I was able to tell the others we were done. They were out of breath and hot, I was just sweaty and terribly itchy from all the grass and weeds I had been tromping around in. It was time for a good shower after that wild circus show!
    All of that rough activity in the cover crops really knocked them down, so I went ahead and took the machete to them this week. That’s a pretty decent way of terminating them, although labor intensive, but some of the stuff will likely grow back and I will have to chop it again. I let the cows terminate one of the cover crops in the pig pen garden last week and they did too good of a job. I lured them in there with a little peanut hay and they went to work. They chomped and trampled everything in sight, right down to nearly nothing.
    They must like eating peas because they didn’t leave much behind. I definitely can see where the machete does a much better job at leaving the biomass on the ground to rot. I found out that they also eat pumpkins, cucumbers and melons, which was a little bit surprising and aggravating. Almost every big Seminole Pumpkin that they came across, they bit a little and they ate some of the smaller ones. Hopefully the bite wounds scab over and they will last a few months. I would like to be able to eat them for a while.
    I have been feeding a lot of the watermelons and overgrown cucumbers to the cows and chickens. I don’t know what I did wrong with the melons, but they just don’t taste good. They are not sweet at all and are super bland, but the chickens don’t mind. And it seems that I almost always overlook a cucumber or two each day. The really big ones get halved and thrown to the chickens.
    It’s pretty fun seeing how we can use the animals to do odd jobs and be my living recyclers. Cows eat the seedy grass then I turn them into an area that needs seed…that’s our version of hydro-seeding, with added fertilizer! The cows were our clean-up crew after unloading a couple hundred bales of peanut hay recently. Peanut hay is awful for losing leaves and there must have been four bales worth of loose hay on the ground when we were done. The cows were happy to clean it up for us and we love watching them enjoy good food.
    I truly don’t know what I would do without all of my animals and the garden. They are my entertainment, good company, teachers, and eventual nourishment (well, not the dogs). The fact that they need daily care keeps me moving and exercised, so taking care of it all is as good as a gym. I can be outside almost all day and can see God and His creativity everywhere I look. It’s a good life and I wouldn’t trade it for any other. Until next time, get outside and enjoy it all.