Wanted: Lawn Order

I found a dead mole floating in the swimming pool recently. Good, I thought cruelly, as I scooped it out and threw it into the bushes. One less on the lawn.

Our lawn, you see, is pock-marked with earth and we’re fighting a losing battle. Actually, the problem is we’re not really fighting – we’re sitting back and allowing the mole terrorists to overrun our land. Siegie, who feels more deeply scarred by the incursion since he’s the mower, calls them “ghastly demons from the subterranean depths of hell” and suggests it may be time to get hold of The Moleman.

But we all know that if you want to rid your garden of moles your neighbours have to join in the fight. That’s because moles don’t respect walls and fences. They’ll be tunnelling back into your garden before you take that first celebratory sip of gin and tonic on the patio.

Besides, there’s your conscience to deal with. What we have in our garden are golden moles, not molerats. While the latter are rodents with large, ugly yellow teeth bent on destroying your plants, true moles are cute little insectivores that burrow under the surface looking for bugs and earthworms. They serve the vital function of helping to keep insect pests under control and aerating the soil. And here’s the crunch – they’re a protected species.

So although I celebrate when they commit suicide, my conscience won’t allow me to kill them. Instead, I’ve tried various remedies guaranteed to send them packing by desperate fellow-gardeners. Hearing that moles are very sensitive to smells, I’ve poked all sorts of smelly things into their tunnels. The dog-poo seemed to offend me more than the moles, while the mothballs were unceremoniously pushed right back out again.

I discussed the problem with my friend Binny the other day while we were walking the dogs. “What you need to do,” she said, “is to create a habitat somewhere else in the garden which will attract the moles.” But we couldn’t quite see all the earthworms and juicy grubs congregating in the flower beds. A better option, we finally agreed, might be to attract the moles’ natural enemies.

With moles more likely to exit their tunnels at night in search of insectivorous snacks, it seems that owls may be our best bet. So please, everyone, do your utmost to attract owls to your gardens – especially if you live in the Hout Bay area. We’d really like to give the grass a chance to grow back.

Survival of the Fittest

On Tuesday afternoon, I ambled down to feed the fish in the koi pond. Just as I was approaching the bridge, my eye was caught by a bright flash that disappeared into the water lilies. A baby had survived!

This is great news in the Morgenrood household. From October, a new cycle in a fierce battle for survival begins in our koi pond. That’s when the koi spawn and Siegie and I start to scan the edges of the pond looking for baby fish. Last season was our best season ever. We counted at least 20 fingerlings by the end of summer, but only two or three have survived the year.

When we first renovated our pond, friends and family used to give us small koi as birthday or Christmas presents. But it soon became obvious that they were throwing money down the drain. Of at least ten koi gifts we’ve received, only one has lived to adulthood.

Besides the frogs and the adult koi, there are three kinds of birds that find our “koilets” irresistible. As summer advances, they regularly visit our pond to gaze lovingly into the depths.

First, there’s the giant kingfisher, which gives a loud cackle of triumph when it spots our pond. But when it lands on the bridge railing, which is way too low for a diving board, it’s forced to fly away frustrated.

Then there’s the heron, which likes to stand motionless in the shallows waiting to stab a large fishy snack as it comes into range. It skirts the edges of our pond and generally flies away in disgust when it realises the water is too deep. This year, however, we had trouble with our pump and the water was low. At least two of our prized three-year-olds fell victim to the heron.

Finally, there’s the reed cormorant, a bird of a different feather, so to speak. Because it needs neither shallow water nor a diving board, it finds our pond a perfect place to hunt for a meal. Any koi smaller than 15 centimetres is fair game for this streamlined swimmer that seems to be able to dart around underwater for agonising minutes.

In the past five years or so, only around eight koi born in our pond have managed to survive into the second year. While most were predominately black with splashes of red, some were completely orange or white with large patches red and black. Desperately, we hoped one of these beauties would survive, but bright coloured fish are more visible. Sure enough, they were picked off one by one until only the darkest remained.

So, although I don’t hold out much hope for the five-centimetre-long light-coloured youngster I spotted the other day, I’m still keeping my fingers crossed.

“Why don’t you put a net over the pond?” a friend suggested. But it’s more important for us to keep our garden as natural as possible. And to be honest, we rather like being able to boast that herons and reed cormorants visit our garden. We just wish we could train them to be slightly less efficient.

The Bush Baby of the Reptile World

It was after dinner and I was reading the paper when something tickled my leg. I glanced down to see a tiny gecko and watched in fascination as it crawled over my thigh and onto the couch.

Then it disappeared. I went back to reading, too scared to move in case I crushed the little thing. A while later, Siegie noticed my gecko climbing up the opposite wall heading for the portrait of Aunt Rosamond.

I’m not sure how she would have felt about having a baby gecko take shelter behind her. I like to think she would have found it highly entertaining and poured another healthy glass of gin and tonic.

You’ve heard of lounge lizards. We have lounge geckos, which are much more appealing than lizards. I reckon one of the reasons is that lizards look like snakes with legs and you can almost imagine their rounded, shiny bodies slithering along the ground. I simply couldn’t watch a lizard crawling over my leg and think it looked cute.

Geckos, on the other hand, are flatter and duller, their mottled bodies looking much more comfortable running up a wall. Like all nocturnal hunters, they have big eyes, which may make them appear more appealing – the bush babies of the reptile world.

Amongst other inhabitants, our house provides a home to geckos. We see evidence of them behind the bar, where their droppings are often found clinging to the walls. Fortunately, a damp cloth is all that’s needed to rectify this problem.

I suspect geckos like that area because they can hide behind the wall unit during the warm light of day. There’s a nice gap between the unit and the wall, giving refuge to who knows how many creatures.

Mostly, we don’t see the geckos in the house, as they come out in search of their insect prey after we’ve gone to bed. We’re much more likely to see them in the garage or storeroom, where the murky surrounds mean they don’t need to find a place to hide.

Until a blundering human enters. Many times, I’ve opened the door to the storeroom in search of gardening tools only to have a gecko drop down to the ground. Then I have to take part in a juggling act to avoid stepping on it or jamming it in the door frame.

Not long ago, I was searching for a plant pot and came upon a black plastic potting bag. As I picked it up, a few eggs fell out and one broke on the concrete floor. That was minus one baby gecko.

It seems geckos face all sorts of monstrous enemies. Besides heavy-handed humans smashing their eggs or squashing their bodies, there are rain spiders waiting to feast on them.

Inevitably, there’s also the friendly neighbourhood cat, partial to pouncing on anything that wriggles so invitingly. And thereby hangs a tale – or tail.

Hadeda Hiatus

I was sitting reading the paper one late afternoon when a couple of hadedas flew in and made a clumsy landing on the lawn. Soon joined by two more, they started ambling in a slow procession, poking the grass with their large bills.

There’d been a rain shower the night before and the ground was nice and soft. Clearly there were rich pickings: every second prod evoked something juicy that was thrown back into gaping throats. It was a peaceful scene – but it wouldn’t last.

Whoever coined the phrase “let sleeping dogs lie”? As anyone with any sense knows, sleeping dogs keep their ears and eyes in standby mode and wake whenever anything vaguely exciting appears to be about to happen. Unless, of course, they’re about to be thrown out of the house for the night, in which case they pretend to be dead to the world.

At all other times, however, they react to triggers that they know promise reward – such as the food cupboard being opened or hiking boots appearing.

Or hadedas on the lawn. With no warning, there was a sudden explosion from the dog cushions under the stairs and a wild scrabbling of paws on the tiles. Bursting out the sliding door onto the patio, Rhea dashed across the lawn. Great brown birds scattered in all directions, raucously shouting “hah-dee-dah, hah-dee-dah”.

Caught up in the thrill of the chase, Rhea overran the edge of the lawn and collected herself rather ungracefully in the flower beds. Then she looked back over her shoulder and realised that the hadedas had merely flown up into the air and landed back on the lawn behind her. She ran back up the lawn, scattering them once more.

But the hadedas had played this game too often and now they’d landed back on the lawn further down. The dog joined me in the lounge, gathering the remnants of her ridgeback pride, and clunked herself down on the floor. Facing the lawn, she lay with her face on her paws, feigning indifference.

She was watching, however, and soon the temptation once more became too much and she exploded out the door to resume the chase. Sluggishly, they rose up from the lawn, leaving it almost to the last minute, wheeled round and landed again. Head down, Rhea ran at them, again and again. Finally, the hadedas had had enough and disappeared over the roof. Rhea retired to her cushion in triumph.

A few minutes later, Siegie came home. “There are a whole load of hadedas round the front,” he told me.

Rhea and I both knew the reason why. But hers was a fleeting victory: the hadedas would be back on the lawn and she’d have to start hounding them all over again.

Of Butterflies and Goodwill

Largely brown and yellow, with two colourful eye spots, there’s no mistaking the Christmas butterfly when it flutters by. More often called Citrus Swallowtails, they’re common in gardens during December and January.

But butterflies are like birds: if you want them to breed in your garden, you need the right plants. When we decided to make our garden indigenous, we checked up on what would attract the different species. We learned that other than citrus trees, the Cape chestnut was a good food source for the caterpillars of the Citrus Swallowtail.

So we bought a young sapling at the Kirstenbosch Plant Sale. We read up that we could expect our chestnut to flower after about eight years and so we waited patiently. The deadline came and went, and still we waited. Finally, after ten years, we were rewarded with a few flowers. 

Today I stand at the bottom of our garden and look back at the house. Arching over the roof on the right is a beautiful, strong tree covered in a pale pink flush of flowers. It has lived up to its botanical name, Calodendrum capense – beautiful tree from the cape. Maybe, in all its decoration, it should be called the Christmas tree.

In the meantime, we discovered what to plant in our garden for the caterpillars of other butterflies. We learned that Wild Peach trees are great for Garden Acraeas, those ubiquitous orange creatures with transparent wing tips. Arctotis and gazanias are for Painted Ladies, whose caterpillars are the only ones to spin themselves webs. Plumbago is good for the Common Blues, while carpet geranium, of course, attracts the Geranium Bronze.

Sometimes, the caterpillars do quite a lot of damage to our greenery. But once they’ve metamorphosed into their fragile alter egos, it’s all worthwhile. Often, I stand in front of the beds of scabiosa and Cape forget-me-nots, watching the butterflies flit from flower to flower. I once watched four Citrus Swallowtails put on a magnificent aerial ballet outlined against an azure sky. Well worth a few chomped up lemon trees, I reckon.

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m even starting to think that those prolific alien invaders, the European Cabbage Whites, can look rather appealing when dancing above the scabiosa.

Maybe it’s because I’m still basking in festive goodwill. Siegie and I wish you and your families a thrilling 2010, filled with joy, love, life's little essentials – and butterflies.

Snake Charmer

Just before 6 p.m. one Sunday, my friend Mariette was drinking tea with us on the patio. Suddenly the birds in the nearby tree started giving their alarm calls. Siegie and I looked at each other and both spoke at the same time: “Snake!” 

All three of us jumped up and dashed over to gaze up at the branches. A number of white eyes were hopping from perch to perch, flicking their wings and chirping in agitation. Somewhere in the background a batis joined in.

Clearly a major threat was nearby, but the foliage was too thick for us to see what it was. Then I stepped back from under the tree and looked up at it from further away. “There it is,” I cried excitedly. Gliding along a branch was the unmistakable underbelly of a boomslang.

Siegie and I left Mariette to keep an eye on the snake while we dashed inside to grab binoculars. Then all three of us went back under the tree and had a good close-up look. With a thick yellow belly and strong black markings, he was clearly a mature male in all his glory.

“He’s as long as my height,” said Siegie, but Mariette and I reckoned this was male posturing. We all agreed he was a big boy, though ­– certainly over a metre.

Binoculars glued to her eyes, Mariette edged around trying to get a good look. She was so enraptured that I feared she might fall into the goldfish pond.

After a few minutes, the snake slithered back into the foliage, the birds quietened down and we went back to our tea.

This isn’t the first time a boomslang has come to visit us. A couple of years ago, another large male hung around for three weeks or so, popping up in different trees every weekend. Always, the birds alerted us to his presence.

One day, while Siegie was away, I stepped out onto the patio to check on my feathered friends’ alarm calls and almost bumped into the boomslang entwined in a branch just above eye level. I’m not sure who got the bigger fright – we both beat a hasty retreat.

But the snake reappeared on the ground a while later, skirting around the pond. Then it suddenly lunged towards the pond, sending a frog leaping into the water. I watched, fascinated, as it stretched the front part of its body out over the water, its tongue flicking in and out as it swayed back and forth. But the frog was deeply submerged and wasn’t set to be a snake snack that day.

When I’d told Mariette about the experience she was sorry to have missed it, so I’m glad she was with us to share our latest “snack attack”. Who knows, maybe it’s the same big male that has claimed our garden as part of his private hunting preserve.

 

Crabby Feeling

Have you ever seen what happens to a crab if it has the misfortune to get sucked into a pool cleaner? Not a pretty sight. And if it’s been there a few days, not a pretty smell either. It gets wedged in so tightly that you have to throw the rubber thingamy away and buy a new one.

It’s happened to us a couple of times. Living near the river guarantees you crabs in your swimming pool now and then. My advice is to fish them out with a net as soon as possible and take them back down to the river. Of course, fishing them out can be quite fun, too: you can end up spending endless frustrating minutes chasing a recalcitrant crab as it scoots sideways around the bottom of the deep end.

It really is amazing how quickly these creatures can move. Once we found one in the kitchen and decided it shouldn’t remain there. Finally cornered, it raised its pincers in defence and I backed off. Even though my mind tells me a pincer on a five-centimetre-wide crab probably won’t inflict much pain I’d rather not find out.

Siegie came to the rescue with his tried-and-tested shrew-catching technique. He grabbed an empty plastic icecream tub, placed it over the crab and slipped a newspaper underneath. It works every time, so I can’t understand why I never think of doing it. Could it be a male thing?

My solutions are always far more complicated and have a high failure rate. Sometimes, though, I think it’s deliberate because I like to feel things. When I have managed to catch a crab and held it firmly around the carapace I’m amazed at how strong its legs are as they push at my fingers. I also get to look at it properly on my way down to the river, admiring its weird dark blobby eyes on their stalks and checking out those dangerous pincers.

Now here’s a thought: maybe we’re doing the crabs a disservice as they’re actually trying to escape the river. Frequent evidence of discarded crab shells on the banks show that they’re hunted mercilessly down there. I’ve always blamed the giant kingfisher, that great koi killer, but there are other predators patrolling the riverbed. A couple of times I’ve found big pellets on the ground composed largely of crab shells.

Then one summer a couple of years ago, I noticed a spotted eagle owl had taken to spending the day on a large rock. I refrained from disturbing him and we often spent time communing from our respective perches. Finally, I got to investigate his rock and found it covered in crab shells.

My owl book tells me that spotted eagle owls have a wide-ranging diet, including crustaceans. So that explains why there are now few crabs on our stretch of river and I haven’t seen an owl for a while. But they’ll be back – and I’ll be here to watch the cycle start again.