Fish in a barrel
7Jun2005 Filed under: HomelyBefore she would let us purchase goldfish for our tiny backyard pond, the weird woman at the water garden store suggested that we get some water hyacinths to test whether or not we had raccoons in our neighborhood. Raccoons apparently love both hyacinths and goldfish, and so if the plants didn’t get eaten after a week or so, we would know it was safe to get fish.
After a week of un-nibbled hyacinths, Dre went and bought four little goldfish. As he knelt down to put the fish into the tiny pond, he noticed that the hyacinths had been devoured the night before. Uh-oh.
Into the pond went the fish, and thus started our dread. Would the raccoon come back and eat them all? Were we dooming these little fish to a short life and a violent death?
Andreas did some research. How do you keep raccoons away from your pond? Our water gardening book revealed this gem of wisdom: if you hang tampons soaked in fox urine around your pond, raccoons won’t bother you.
Lemme repeat that: soak tampons in fox urine. Hang them around your pond.
The first question (where the fuck does one get fox urine?) was quickly answered. Why, the interweb, of course! You want fox urine, coyote urine, other kinds of urine? NO PROBLEM!
The larger question, however, is this: doesn’t a ring of bloated wet tampons defeat the whole purpose of having a nice relaxing backyard fishpond?
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6 Responses to “Fish in a barrel”
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Hey there. I'm Ariel Meadow Stallings, a native Seattleite who's written my way up and down the Left Coast. Electrolicious is where I post daily randomata, but I also write for a living. My first book, Offbeat Bride, was published last year.
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greta
June 7th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
ah! we used to have to do something similar to keep moles away from our garden. we used to get these little wooden spikes with a sponge-foam type head, that you would soak in the urine and then stick into the ground (with the urine part above ground). this might be a little less obtrusive than hanging tampons. I think we got them at our local gardening store/nursery; you might try asking at a similar type of place.
or, ask the woman at the water garden store. there are probably other more aesthetically-pleasing solutions.
cameron
June 7th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
Of course you can get fox urine over the interweb, that’s what it’s for! The bigger question, is how the hell do the suppliers of fox urnie acquire it? Farmed foxes? Little fox-urinals conveniently placed throughout the forest, and a strange old woodsy man who wanders around collecting them?
cameron
June 7th, 2005 at 2:44 pm
Sadly, the link has a description of how they get the stuff: “Urine is collected from animals in game farms, zoos and preserves.” The interweb has taken all the mystery out of life.
xaotica
June 8th, 2005 at 8:31 pm
an entire happy day could be spent coming up with nicknames for the fox urine tampons
alight
June 9th, 2005 at 9:43 am
Sting ‘em on a bit of wire and think of them as zen wind chimes. What is the sound of two fox urine-soaked tampons clacking together?
David
June 9th, 2005 at 1:15 pm
what about a keeper full of fox urine?