{"id":4271,"date":"2022-07-20T22:45:15","date_gmt":"2022-07-21T02:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/?page_id=4271"},"modified":"2022-07-20T22:45:15","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T02:45:15","slug":"guano","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/?page_id=4271","title":{"rendered":"“Guano”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bacon Scrapins<\/em><\/strong> are the little bits of meat left in the greasy fry pan. They\u2019re tasty, but the nutrition needs searching for. This tale is a <\/em>bacon scrapin<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

One of my pleasures is sitting in my zero-gravity recliner and pondering stuff. Important stuff, like the destination of a passenger jet overhead. The drift of \u2018continents and their peoples\u2019 as imagined in overhead clouds\u2019 shapes. The drift and swoop of birds. I enjoy their graceful arcs as they come in to land and then, with a perky twist of the head, they check for potential predators or a food source.<\/p>\n

The pleasure I treasure, though, is sitting in my recliner, in pristine condition, washed only by the rain. I had never considered that I might be motivated to become a robin\u2019s predator. But the past few weeks have had me planning combat strategies \u2013 me versus the robins.<\/p>\n

It had come to pass that I\u2019m not the only one who enjoyed the view from my recliner. It was long white streaks that appeared on the back of my chair that first caught my attention. Looking out the back window I spied a culprit. A robin was enjoying the scenery from the rear yard, as I like to, while perched on the top of the back of my chair. Not its chair, my chair. My throne of solitude!<\/p>\n

And then it did it!\u00a0 A long white streak of goo appeared down my chair. Guano! Bird poop! And the robin didn\u2019t even have the dignity to be embarrassed. It just rested there and continued to enjoy my view, relieved of all its worldly cares. The selfish vandal! It was using my throne as its throne – turning it ceramic white. It sat there and enjoyed the graces of living, where I should be able to sit with no worldly concerns \u2013 including no guano!<\/p>\n

Subsequently, I dragged the chair to the outside tap and hose nozzle, and with a soft-bristle brush, scrubbed off the defiling mess. I dragged the chair back to another spot, less under the huge pine tree, hoping the new location would not be in any birds\u2019 landing flight path.\u00a0 Wrong. A few days later, the same accumulation of guano appeared.<\/p>\n

What I needed, I decided, was a scarecrow. We have farm fields across the way and get our share of domestic animal fumes, but a scarecrow did not seem to conform with the ambiance of our ‘nine-stop-signs sized’ community. I needed another solution.<\/p>\n

By happenstance, while in the \u2018more-than-a-dollar-now\u2019 store, I found it. It was perfect \u2013 six blades to catch the breeze, six colours, sturdy wooden frame, whirled easily with a pursed mouth blow, and only 4 bucks. A gorgeous whirligig!<\/p>\n

I again cleaned off my zero-gravity throne, installed a short piece of black tubular water pipe foam insulation along the side of the chair frame, and slid the whirligig into place. It spun freely in the wind. My \u2018scarecrow\u2019 was in place.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been monitoring robin behaviour through the back window. The little villains hop toward the chair. They twist their scrawny necks to find a way past my defenses. The continued motion of the coloured blades dissuades their coming any closer. They move on to spread their havoc elsewhere. Success!<\/p>\n

I still like watching birds, knowing they aren\u2019t likely to drop their chaos onto my comfortable perspective of life\u2019s ways.<\/p>\n

I wonder if we could protect ourselves from \u2018social-media-conspiracy-theorists\u2019 guano if we all carried whirligigs?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bacon Scrapins are the little bits of meat left in the greasy fry pan. They\u2019re tasty, but the nutrition needs searching for. This tale is a bacon scrapin. One of my pleasures is sitting in my zero-gravity recliner and pondering stuff. Important stuff, like the destination of a passenger jet overhead. The drift of \u2018continents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4072,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4271","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4272,"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4271\/revisions\/4272"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisiswilmot.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}