turtles tanks on a sunny day

Ah my turtles have clean tanks! I love watching them settle into their newly cleaned tanks. They get a water change every 2 weeks with all their turtle filth water going to the plants. My plants love turtle filth! In theory I should not use it on any of the fruit trees because the resulting fruit may contain salmonella. However, my fruit trees are just large rat feeding stations as I have yet been able to snag nary an avocado nor mandarin orange. My yard rats have an elaborate network of tunnels so unless I start a completely sealed off hydroponic system in the garage my dreams of urban farming will never come true.

We also have this crazy 100 mile wide termite colony that basically covers all of the LA basin out into the desert. It’s one of the largest eco-systems in the world and I would like to kill it with fire. Every spring, after the first rain, the city comes alive with fluttering “white flies” which are actually termites emerging from underground to mate. We see steady streams of them, like smokestacks of fluttering termites, pouring from cracks and crevices in the back yard. It’s terrifying. Then you drive around the city and they’re everywhere. There’s a lot more wildlife in L.A. than most people would imagine. Our neighborhoods are home to packs of coyotes who have completely moved out of nature and now live entire life cycles in crawl spaces, tool sheds and vacant lots. We have feral parrots, supposedly descendants of Mary Pickford’s long lost pets, who scream from palm trees, imitating ambulances and car-alarms. Until a few years ago we didn’t have mosquitos at all but some invasive species showed up on a cargo ship in the port of LA and now we’re lousy with them. I’ve been looking into installing a bat house under my awning to deal with my uninhabitable back yard. When I go out to my pergola or porch on warm summer nights I get eaten alive!

Alright, I’m off to go ride my bike.