Friday, May 5, 2017

Take that MotherFlicker!...White Trash Craftery™

No, a FLICKER.  The bird.  The bird that is destroying me wee shed.

It, or they, has/ve been pecking holes in the cabin for a while.  I covered the first batch of holes with the bits of metal I had on hand...muffin tins from the thrift store.  That looks sort of cute actually:














THEN the stupid motherflicker (I'm assuming it's a parent trying to bring home the bacon/beetles to wee ones), moved to another side of the cabin and spread out the damage.

I was out of muffin tins.  Didn't want to move to loaf pans.  Or baking sheets.

I thought perhaps SHARP would be a benefit.

I had a couple of #10 cans from the recycling center that I'd had plans for.  Plans that were never executed.  So I though perhaps I could use the tin snips to cut strips from those and hang them (White Trash Craftery Rule #1: use what you have).  As I am cutting up the first can, I figured out that hanging 10 strips from the eaves would be complicated and I would never get around to it  (White Trash Craftery Rule #2: plan for your inherent laziness).  The remaining can got flattened out.  The seams on the sides cut off.  Then I cut it as though making a garland out of a sheet of paper. I couldn't find a diagram of this on the internet so I made one for you special.  Just like the actual product, the cut lines (shown in green) are unevenly spaced and crooked.  I'm not bothering with neat work for a stupid motherflicker.












Once you make the cuts, you just pull the ends apart...voila, instant sharp jaggedy metal garland for free!

It was definitely sharp.  I wouldn't stand on it to bang my face into a wall, but I'm not a flicker.  
To put it up, I started a nail through each end, stood on a slippery metal cooler on the weakening boards of my shabby stoop, and tried not to let anything hit my eyes (the safety glasses were clear down in the car...like a quarter mile away (White Trash Craftery Rule #3: Safety is secondary)).

Here it is:















It's blocking the view of the worst holes but you can see a smaller one above the Flicker-B-Gone™ garland and how it has been stripping a few of the battens on my board-n-batten siding.  As it happened, the #10 can had a coppery inside and a silvery outside so this turned out to be more interesting looking than I'd planned.

Of course when the wind blew I was awoken in the night by a mysterious metal rattling sound.
I think that means the Flicker-B-Gone can also be labeled as Wind Chimes.

I'm thinking that putting a few of these along the top of the fence between me and the rest stop might deter ne'er-do-well types.  That makes it both a "Flicker-B-Gone™ " and a "F...er-B-Gone™ ."  With a side of Wind Chimes.

2 comments:

Cache said...

I've heard running thin fishing line across the spots and looping it around nails driven at each side would keep away woodpeckers...

Jill said...

Thanks for the tip!