A Beautiful Pea-Green Boat

In our never-ending effort to reduce, reuse, blah blah blah, I've started a compost pile. It is conveniently located right next to our kitchen door. Obviously, I'm doing something wrong because instead of making awesome dirt, I'm feeding all the local rats plus some of their out-of-town relatives. They've been partying it up right next to our kitchen door.

Danceman very kindly offered to swiftly rid the yard of such vermin but I balked. "What about all the wildlife that might end up eating the poisoned rats??" I cried.

"We need more wildlife then." He said.

Hmmmm.


Then I wondered wheather I could entice a hungy family of barn owls to move into our backyard and I set out to buy or build the perfect owl home. I called Project Wildlife to find out how big the local owls are and they invited me to an owl box building workshop. Of course, I signed up immediately. Who could pass up an opportunity to use power tools in a safely controlled environment?


Did you know an average barn owl can eat two rat-sized piles of meat every day? Me neither.

Chicks in the workshop.

We learned valuable lessons such as 'Measure Twice. Cut Once.'

I drilled this hole, and many others all by myself!

Then I took it home and stained it.

Here is Danceman, climbing up a really tall ladder with powertools to properly place our new owl family's home. Because I'm a bit scared of heights and he's such a stud.

The front door, hidden amongst the evil elm tree. Its not really evil, it just drops a lot of leaves. In our neighbor's pool. Sorry, neighbors.

View of the back. Engineered by Danceman.

It's not really a pea-green boat and hopefully, no pussycats can get in, but we're still hoping for an owl...
A big thank you to Gavin, the instructor, and all the volunteers at Project Wildlife for their valuable time and expertise. Also, since I'm such a nuckle-head, special thanks to Trish for sending me the workshop photos.