What are you doing for the summer?

I have a bunch of outside house projects this summer.

Man vs. Animal
I have a small man made pond in my neighborhood. There were these nutrias (looks like a rat, but is the size of a beaver with a tail) dug a hole in the area that usually blocked most of the water. A couple of years ago most of the dirt underneath this log washed away leaving very little water, only a small stream. My neighbors didn't know what to do or wanted to be involved. I volunteered to build a small cinder block to block the water (sorry, can't use the normal word as I will get censored)


I built a simple blockade of cinder block on the outside and hauled about 500 5-gal buckets of gravel to fill in from behind. What a mistake. The &*^%$ nutrias dug out the gravel and started to tear down the cinder blocks. The blockade burst and only a very small amount of water remained.

The spring and probably for the next month. I've dug out every thing and started over. Hauled over 100 cinder blocks down there. Using rebar and gravel for the lower and middle layers and hoping to put a layer of concrete down on the top layer of blocks.

If the nutrias mange to dig through concrete. I will surrender and let the nutrias take over....

I saw a show called Ratzilla on the Discovery Channel the other day. Nutria were originally imported from South America in the early part of the twentieth century and were used to make fur coats. Styles changed and some fool turned them loose and now they are everywhere. They are know for eating constantly, eating almost anything, and causing extreme erosion problems. They are causing canal banks to erode in New Orleans and they showed the SWAT team out at night using spotlights on them and shooting them for target practice.