No Slug is Safe

I am apparently the dumbest person who ever lived. But before you start feeling superior, let me point out that all of you are pretty dumb, too. Because I asked your advice about something, and your advice was just as dumb as what I eventually did.

I had several concrete slugs in the yard. I had to get rid of them. I ended up renting a demo hammer and breaking them up so I could pull them out by hand. Boy, was that dumb. I later realized there was a better way. You drill two holes in the slug, attach a loop of rebar with epoxy, attach a chain to the loop, and pull with a hoist or a truck or something. Actually, a real man would twist a loop in the rebar with his vice and 3-foot pipe wrench, so he could attach it to the slug with one hole. I happen to know where I can borrow a 3-foot pipe wrench.

I still have one slug. Today I bought a piece of rebar and some epoxy, plus something every man needs: a tow chain. I was going to make up my own, but Home Depot had premade chains with hooks, and I didn’t want to wait three hours for someone to cut a piece of chain for me.

I just used the chain to rip out a live oak tree I didn’t like. Here, squirrels are sacred, because the local citizenry has no understanding of the evil that abides in the heart of a squirrel. Among their other misdeeds and atrocities (like cutting every single fruit off my mango tree), the squirrels plant invasive weeds and trees everywhere. Eventually there will be nothing here but live oaks, scrub oaks, jasmine vines, and happy, leering squirrels. There was a live oak in a hedge next to the house, thanks to my rodent friends. It got so big, the yard guys thought it was a shrub, and they trimmed it for a couple of years.

I wrapped my new chain around it, attached the chain to my father’s Explorer, and yanked. First one direction, then another. Now the tree resides in the trash heap. And I declare victory. BAH HA HA. Kneel before Zod.

Here’s a new reason to hate leaf blowers: they blow mulch away. I know, because I just spent half an hour replacing it. If you don’t mulch your trees, the Salvadorans go right up to them with their motorized weed whackers, and they girdle them. That may be why one of my papayas just fell over dead.

The papayas sucked anyway.

I decided to mulch my potted peppers to keep the weeds down. I hope mulch doesn’t kill pepper plants.

I have decided I need a second chain hoist. I have one in the garage, but it’s mounted on the overhead trusses, and I don’t feel like taking it down when I need it. And it’s only a half-ton job. I want a slightly bigger one I can attach to heavy objects when I need to pull things for various reasons.

Time to get up. I have steaks to freeze, guns to clean, a hasp to install…the list is pretty nasty.

I may go out and spit on that tree, just for the joy of it.