Saturday, September 12, 2009

An Open Letter to the Caterpillars in my backyard:

Dear Vermin,

If you had asked me a couple of weeks ago to make an ordered list of bugs, sorted from my favorite to my most hated, it would have probably gone something like this:

1) Lady bugs
2) Pill bugs
....
8) Caterpillars
...
67) Flies
...
82) Spiders
...
87) Maggots
88) Wasps

Obviously that's not a complete list, but you get the idea. Pretty and charming bugs at the top, with stinging and nauseating bugs at the bottom. You, dear caterpillars, were in the upper part of that list, due to your picture-book charm and borderline magical ability to transform into butterflies.

Do you know where you are on my list this week? RIGHT AT THE FREAKING BOTTOM! I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

Two weeks ago I had a lovely vegetable garden. I had bowls of sweet sugar snap peas, ripening chard, bountiful lettuce, and more horrid little zucchinis that I knew what to do with.

Today I have a planter box full of you. Hundreds of you. You've voraciously chewed your way through all of my tasty vittles leaving behind piles of poo as your calling card. Oh, and don't think I haven't noticed that you've left only the zucchini untouched. Nice touch, assholes.

This turn of events bodes poorly for both of us.

It bodes poorly for me because much of my hard work has gone to waste. It bodes poorly for you because now the killing begins.

I tried doing the eco-wacko-hippie thing, spraying each of the plants with a garlic solution, which was supposed to deter you from eating them. As it turns out, you LOVE garlic. I got tricked into seasoning the vegetables for you and you rewarded me by eating more of my plants.

Now I'm going to try something a little different. I'm going to rupture your gut cells! Hooray!

So, game on, bastards.

Your merchant of death,
Mike

6 comments:

Portlander said...

Any fool can grow tasty vegetables but how many people can lay claim to a BUTTERFLY GARDEN! Redefine success and you can have bragging rights my friend! Post a picture and maybe we can figure out which butterflies to expect. Nice work!

Mike said...

Unless I can eat those butterflies, I'm not interested.

Anonymous said...

DDT. That is all.

Not really, but I know - the garlic, the soap, the sugar-beer-yeast-wtf concoctions have got to stop. This is war.

Pesticidally (sp?) yours.

Mike said...

Amen, Cottage Child. I'll play the organic game for about as long as it makes sense. Then, it's a last man/caterpillar standing thing.

chess said...

It looks from their web page that gut cell research has advanced quite a bit in recent years. Mike, I hope you are rewarded for your efforts by thousands of steaming, thrashing caterpillar corpses in one to three days.

Mike said...

Sounds like heaven, Chess. Thanks!