Damn Birds

A few years ago, my friend Shawnee (she of the Ever Available Hot Tub) was getting rid of a whole patch of mature raspberry canes, and asked me if I wanted some. Holy cow, did I ever! Canes that size (around 3 feet tall) that are already bearing fruit, are impossible to find at the garden stores and cost a fortune. Also, raspberries you get from the store are wildly expensive, except for the 20 minutes they are in season, and go bad about an hour after you get them home from the store. We love raspberries here at Chez Loudshoes, so being able to go outside and just pick some was very popular.

The first year we had them, we got a very respectable harvest, around 4 cups of raspberries. (That would cost about the same as the equivelent amount of diamone-studded gasoline.) We were thrilled. Then last year, the Mister got it into his head that the canes needed to be pruned. Now, if I were pruning raspberry canes, I think I would probably make sure that I did it in the proper season, lest I get it wrong and there be no raspberries for the upcoming summer, and my wife become very sulky. But the Mister is made of different stuff than I, and either pruned them in the spring when it should have been the fall, or the other way around, and the canes just sat there, disheartened and inconsolable, and distinctly without fruit for the duration. This year, he listened to reason, and left them the hell alone, and we are promised a lavish crop of raspberries.

Except for those damn birds.
Just as each little jeweled ruby of a raspberry ripens, a starling or a robin or a sparrow dives down and snatches it up. The bastards.
I know songbirds are endangered because of cats, (the Crazy Lady across the street tells me every single time when Toby catches a bird), and I did have a bit of sympathy for them until this. They wake me up at 4 a.m, they shit all over my car and now they eat my raspberries? Do they want to live at all??? Because I will cheerfully kill them barehanded myself if I catch them at the raspberries again.

The fortress that surrounds our garden this year has thwarted the rabbits most impressively, but does nothing to keep the birds away. I may have to sit out in the patch of dirt and shoo them away myself. It would be totally worth it, if I can just keep all the raspberries and not have to share with anyone. I guess that's the birds' plan, too.