I said I was sure I was older than you. You said this was nonsense. It may be nonsense that I'm older than you; but it's not nonsense that I'm sure I am.

@DavidWallace I meant that you're no doubt younger in spirit!

Yes, you seem to have the spirit of some kind of ancient Greek mythical being.

Yup. My spirit is old and tawny.

So Mahnax is some kind of a cat lover?

@DavidWallace An allergic one, alas.

So join the queue.

I am the opposite, apart from the allergic bit. All our neighbours have cats, and we constantly find their droppings on our lawn. Also, they sing at night and keep us awake. I wish there were some way of keeping cats out of our property.

Oh, that does suck.

Pooping and making noise.

Maybe some kind of fence?

But it's annoying that you should have to build a fence.

My property is well fenced. I frequently see cats walking along the top of my fence, maybe 3 metres off the ground. I don't know how they get up there.

Barbed wire seems a bit extreme.

Haha.

They probably climb up your fence.

What kind of material is it on the outside?

I don't see how barbed wire will stop a cat

@rumtscho No, it probably won't. I'm just having sadistic anti-cat fantasies.

@Cerberus Yes, I'm sure they do. Most of my fences are wooden.

@DavidWallace Hey, I love cats.

Great, @rumtscho, you can come and clean the poo out of my garden then.

@DavidWallace Isn't it burried?

When I used to have a cat, I never saw his poo. He burried it in the garden.

Maybe some of my neighbours' cats do that. Certainly not all of them.

OMG, it's David Wallace.

Much of it seems to end up on the soles of my shoes.

Try planting catsbane around the perimeter.

I've never heard of such cats. It is an instinct for them to dig it into the ground. This is why they need boxes of litter inside.

Also, your piss around the perimeter.

Also, they make ultrasonic deterrents.

What's catsbane? Where can I get some? I'm not going to piss in my yard.

I suppose I should also say OMG it's @rumtscho! I haven't seen you in months.

@DavidWallace No, piss in a container, then spray it in your yard. I'm not weird or anything.

@KitFox now there are lots of people hanging out in the frying pan, so I stay there most of the time

@KitFox Umm, I don't think I'm going to do that either. Is my local garden centre likely to have catsbane?

@DavidWallace your pharmacy is more likely to.

@DavidWallace Hmm, it must be a local name for something. I can't seem to find it.

I think my mother went through a similar experience, but the garden centre sold her catnip instead of catsbane, which had the opposite effect of what she wanted.

@rumtscho Oh, so it's not a herb?

Or, maybe I am thinking of catnip right now - I seem to be as bad as the garden center employee

I can only find cowbane.

@DavidWallace Both catnip and catsbane are herbs, and one of them is used in herbal medicine, the extract is sold in pharmacies.

You don't happen to want to deter cows, do you?

@KitFox If I ever have a problem with unwanted cows in my yard, I'll be certain to let you know.

You guys don't speak Russian, right? It was RegDwight who does?

That's right.

Crap, does he?

Well, I can't speak for David.

Umm, Vitaly seems to be here. You could ping him.

I don't even know him.

No, I don't want to ping anybody

I speak a slavic language, but not Russian.

Did you have something that needed to be translated?

I remembered a very funny forum thread about catsnip etc., but obviously there is no sense to share it with you.

BRB, trying to find my herbal.

I don't need it translated, I understand Russian myself.

I've just read that the active ingredient in catnip also works as an insect repellent.

scrunches face I can't believe I can't find catsbane.

You've heard of it, at least?

Or did I make it up completely?

Damn, there is a cat walking across my yard, right this minute. AFK while I chase it away.

The word sounds familiar.

Could it be a mythical herb?

Maybe, but I don't think so.

I'm not scary enough. It just sat there and glared at me, until I got really close.

I read something about a motion controlled sprinkler being pretty effective.

@KitFox I bet

Fantastic idea. I'll give it a try. I suppose I can move it around too, so they never know where it's going to pop up and start spraying them.

Although, these cats are weird.

@DavidWallace Oh and if you used the kind for kids that pops up and waves arms around, they'd never come back.

If they don't bury their poo and don't run away when being approached by an obviously unfriendly human, they could even like water or such.

Maybe it's monkshood

That's also called leopard's bane.

and also "women's bane". This might not be what I'm looking for :-)

Umm, no, there are too many small children in my neighbourhood for me to consider something this highly toxic.

So no foxglove either then, eh?

Oh! I know. I am pretty sure they hate lily plants, like day lilies and tiger lilies.

And thorny hedgerows might deter them too.

If there are small children, don't install motion-sensor sprinklers

Hahaha.

They will just start playing in the water, catching colds from running around wet and letting you sit on the utility bill

"What the—it's midnight! What are those children doing in my yard!?"

sound of children giggling and laughing far away

Colds are more manageable than aconitum poisoning. Also, (and I know this isn't an excuse for wasting water), our water here is unmetred and paid for at a flat rate.

All the more reason to spray your own piss around the yard.

@rumtscho Same here. But I heard of people whose children used to inadvertently eat cat poo in their sandpit.

@DavidWallace Actually sprinklers might work very well. Cats absolutely hate, hate motion-detecting sprinklers.

Ohai.

Hi!

I shall try them. Unless my Mrs has any violent objections to them.

I imagine she might...

Same f**King cat! AFK.

Make sure they don't hit the garden path.

Oh, dear!

Lol, he is serious.

Evil terrorists.

@rumtscho Yes, very.

While I am the world's greatest cat lover, I do sympathize.

Is he the same David Wallace that wrote those really excellent books and then killed himself a few years ago?

David Foster Wallace?

@Cerberus You ever heard of above-ground pooping cats before?

@KitFox Nah, such a great man can't hate cats :)

Little bastard isn't the slightest bit scared of me!

Can with pennies.

Yell and shake it right in its face. Scare the bejeezus out of it.

@KitFox throw a penny into a can each time you see a cat, save yourself rich?

Holy gods, how can anyone work on a tiny monitor?

Thing is, I'd need to put one somewhere in the front lawn, but not close to the path between the front gate and the front door. Otherwise, I might annoy visitors.

punches computer

@DavidWallace You could have it on a switch.

You mean, only turn it on after dark?

@DavidWallace I think cats use the toilet in the day too.

@DavidWallace Or when you are expecting visitors.

Eh? See?

Good evening

I sometimes have unexpected visitors.

Evening @MrShiny.

@DavidWallace Yes, well, do you like that?

Of course, many of them are selling religion. Don't mind spraying them.

You could deter the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses as well, see?

So @MrShiny, I go through all that effort of trying to think of hot sweaty man stuff, and my husband is playing poker tonight.

OK, well the day before yesterday, one of my son's friends came round to the house unexpectedly. Doesn't seem fair to soak an 11yo kid.

Hmm.

Maybe you could put KoolAid in it, to soften the blow.

amazon.com/Contech-CRO101-Scarecrow-Activated-Sprinkler/dp/…

Its liek ur readin my mind.

@DavidWallace an 11 yo would love to get soaked unexpectedly

Is that a deer in the fourth photo?

11 yo frequently get soaked unexpectedly, from what I hear.

No, daddy, you soaked Bambi!

rofl

There are a ton of funny pictures.

@aedia ^

whoo! in-betweening for the awesome

Apparently, it doesn't work on Leo DiCaprio.

Just reading the reviews! So in South Carolina, people really do get deer coming into their yards. That's amazing!

We have deer too.

And turkeys.

And skunks and woodchucks.

jinx!

jinx

Meta-jinx!

And moose and bears.

moosebane?

@KitFox - where do you live?

I don't even know what a woodchuck is.

A groundhog?

@DavidWallace I live in the northeastern part of the US.

OK, I just wikipediaed it. I am not from North America.

@rumtscho Hmm well, I figure they always try to bury it, but doesn't always work as intended; sometimes they just scratch the ground a little bit.

@DavidWallace I know.

Haha, great pictures.

Must. Stop. Looking.

Must. Keep. Working.

Must. Start. Sleeping.

Aww you're still working??

And you're still up?

...?

@Cerberus I was supposed to finish this stuff today.

@Kit Not cool.

Not cool at all.

One reviewer wrote "This device only turns on roughly half the time a dog enters its scan area. After a few months the unit quit altogether. In its defense it did soak a few teenagers in the back yard at 2am on a cold night. I enjoyed that. "

Nooo not Michael Jackson on a tiny bike!!

Get me one of those sprinklers!

Don't worry, @Sonic, you're safe now.

@Kit remove that picture.

@KitFox Is it really that bad if you finish it tomorrow?

@SonicTheHedgehog What? What's wrong with it?

I am in suburbia, and we don't have any of the animals mentioned here. Only cats, dogs and possums (which BTW are not the same animal that Americans call possums)

@Cerberus You are still up too

@Cerb everything.

@DavidWallace Haha, sounds like your kind of thing?

@DavidWallace Really? I had no idea there were other possums.

Our possums are mean and evil.

@DavidWallace Oh, you have suburbs in NZ too?

We don't really have them.