Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22208 – 763:
Well, the guy came and ran his scope down the pipe and there were the mud and sand. The pipe is collapsed. We’re built on a solid slab with no crawl space. What this means is that to access the pipe they will have to jackhammer up a two-foot by five-foot area of the floor, take out a wall, and probably remove a cabinet in the kitchen that is on the other side of the wall, just to get at it. Lots of money. As nice of a guy as he is, however, I am going to get a couple of other estimates and ideas before I go with it. I know the technology exists to replace pipes without doing that but I think the pipe has to be somewhat complete. The ingenious Mrs. herb has found a workable temporary way to deal with it for now which buys us time to shop around. I’m going to call the insurance guy as well, but I’m not confident that this should be covered. Can’t hurt to ask, however.
On other fronts, I was visiting a blog that I have only visited once or twice before. The guy was describing an ongoing problem they have been having with foxes on the property. One of the problems is that people feed them because they think they’re cute. This creates a dependency on humans and takes away the natural fear that wild animals should have. Readers that have been around any length of time know that I think that it is really bad for wild critters to eat people food (or people) and shelled out good cash money to buy bear-proof trash cans. To find out about my bears you can just search the word “bear” in the blog search bar and you can read some posts about it. Anyway, I have only visited this blog once or twice before and had not ever commented before but I left the comment, “Humans feeding wild animals is always a bad idea.” Which the blog author responded to me with the word “exactly.” Then someone else responded to me with the comment, in part, “…We’ve taken up a lot of their habitat and actually whithout feeding some wildlife, many wouldn’t survive. That’s just a fact…”
Um, no. It’s not. But I was on someone else’s blog I had not been on previously and did not want to get in what I imagine could have become a protracted argument and I didn’t want to do that. So I (figuratively) came home to remind you, gentle readers, that it is NEVER a good idea to feed wild animals. Seriously, wild animals are supposed to shy away from humans whether it’s bears or foxes or whatever it is. This neighborhood used to have foxes but I haven’t seen any around here in a long while. They were a nuisance to most homeowners. When critters get used to getting handouts from people, and this is not even taking into account that human food and trash can be very harmful to animals, they become emboldened and there are many documented cases (this means facts) of humans being attacked by wild animals because they would not give them food. Then the animal, through no fault of its own, must be put down. Bears often get one chance by being relocated to a wilderness area if they seem to have enough natural instinct yet. There are many good reasons it’s against the law to feed them. Well, it is here, anyway. I expect that it is the same in the UK where I think the original blogger is located.
And remember:
Comments
21 responses to “Minor Plumbing Update and Please Don’t Feed The Animals”
I agree with not feeding wild animals with the exception that I do enjoy feeding songbirds.
I think wildlife feeding depends on the circumstances. In Slovenia they used to put out carrion food piles for brown bears to feed on, because we have a lot of them in the forests in the southern regions and it was a way to keep the bears fed and the local sheep population safe. The forests there are kind of wild and people have overhunted deer etc, so the bears would wander into the villages in search of food. Some bureaucratic idiot in the EU decided to outlaw carrion piles for the whole EU on the basis of sanitation and trash management, so now the bears are wandering into the villages and they have to be shot to keep their population in check. Slovenia has one of Europe’s largest wild brown bear populations and we even export them to other countries as part of conservation efforts, but now there’s a raging debate between the government, farmers and animal lovers about shooting the bears, because on the one hand it’s practically an endangered species in its natural habitat and on the other hand it’s a freaking bear who may attack humans even if the farmers put up fences etc to protect the sheep. Also, farmers want to save money and claim the bears are out of control and the government doesn’t want to cover the costs of safety measures. Meanwhile the bears are learning how to open bear-safe dumpsters…it’s a mess, all because some dude stamped a document in another country that doesn’t even have bears.
That’s really a peculiar situation. But, if they had not put out the carrion piles in the first place the bear population might not have gotten big enough to be a problem? I don’t think a bureaucrat in another country should dictate to the localities of another country. Local wildlife officials will know better than outsiders.
The problem is that the practice is really old and that the place in question is on the edge of a huge forest, so the bears would’ve multiplied either way. This was a way to keep livestock safe and coexist with the bears
Interesting. And I do think that local leaders who understand what is going on would be far more qualified than some faraway bureaucrat who knows nothing about it.
Absolutely, but the EU has + and – . The problem is that the local leaders and experts can’t agree on this either, so it’s an ongoing thing, it stopped a bit because of corona now though. Bears are actually quite common in some parts here, so people just live with it. My friend had one in the garden last year 😂
I had to buy bear proof trash cans.
It usually doesn’t take much to make your house uninteresting
Very true.
Don’t feed the bears, unless you’re willing to feed yourself to them. In that case, be my guest.
Lol…That’s why I got bear-proof trash cans.
I wonder if horizontal directional drilling is used in home plumbing situations like this. In a perfect world, they would be able to drill out the old pipe and then pull through a new pipe.
That’s what I was wondering about, too. I saw similar procedures on the Internet.
New natural gas lines in our rural area were installed with horizontal directional drilling. My husband really enjoyed watching the process, asking questions, etc. (He never let on that a large portion of his career was doing the same thing in the oil industry.)
Very cool. It sounds very logical.
So sorry about your plumbing. Not what you’d call a Do It Yourself Job. Around here the trouble are deer. Folks feed them and the population grows. The land can’t support it and people forget to make up the slack. We now have a problem with starved carcasses. They can survive and you’re not helping
Laugh anyway
Thanks. No, it really isn’t. Wildlife needs to be left alone. What a waste of venison. Seriously.
That really is rotten about the plumbing. I read your later post about Mrs. Herb, and I’m thinking that 2021 can’t come fast enough for you. This has been an awful year for so many, and I think there will be a collective sign of relief when it’s over. Do take care.
Thanks, I hope you’re right.
True stuff
Thanks.