Thread 4 Burnham: Be alert, the world needs more lerts

[DuncinToffee]

Welcome to our long running thread for political discussion, general chit chat, a friendly hug and taxes in kind. 💐🍦 for anyone who needs them.

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5561429-thread-3-burnham-receso-para-reorganizarse?page=39

I'm watching Paddington.

I love Paddington. The stage show is lovely , too.

Watched Paddington earlier too. And have many happy memories of reading the books as a child as well.
That film should be mandatory watching for Daily Mail readers bigots, but I suspect they'd be too thick to able to recognise the obvious parallels.

And Paddington 2 is even better!

About the only MN I've been arsed with, today, is a thread about bins.

Bag progress has stalled because I want a different zip to the one I had.

Absolutely LOVE the dancing in the jail their pink jumpsuits. 😂

Some of MN could do with getting in the bin right now.🤣

Would wager the bin saga is about the new green ones that are being issued to reduce recycling. As in it'll attract rodents, despite being lockable.

We have food waste bins here for about 20 years. Never attracted rodents.

Foxes on the other hand ...

Foxes have never got to mine yet. A very clever cat did!

We have to keep ours weighted closed with two house bricks. I once watched a fox jump onto the wall at the front of our house, jump down onto the bin, so he could knock it over, and then unlock the locking handle with his snout.

Clever animals!

We get quite a few foxes round us but in 28 years of living here they've never raided the food bins - perhaps our foxes aren't very bright.😆

We've had “lockable” food waste bins for a decade.
We use bricks, put the bins inside boxes and week in, week out the foxes get in.

Same problem for my neighbours. Picking up tea bags and peelings from the drive. Wednesday morning is my dogs favourite walk. 🤢

This summer though my area seems to have developed a rat problem. Normalish to see them on early morning dog walks. But the last few months I see them on the lunchtime one too - not in the undergrowth, on the paths.
I guess maybe heat related?

Now that would be a good cat tax picture 😂

We also have green bins for waste. Blue for recycling and now the food bins.

Foxes like the food ones but they haven’t increase since numbers. They just have a bigger feast!

Our problem this summer (due to heatwave I should think) is flies and maggots. <shudder>

We don't get foxes raiding the food bins but we have to leave the shed we store bird food in open or badgers will rip holes in it. We now keep an anvil on top of a metal bin to stop them getting at it. But they ignore the food waste.

Here it's foxes and seagulls vs the re-cycling

The foxes are more intelligent and dextrous - patiently un-packing the boxes to find what they want

The seagulls are completely the opposite flinging stuff everywhere and won't be scared off unlike the foxes

We have a small food bin that gets emptied on a weekly basis, never had problems with it.

Plenty of foxes around but no seagulls.

Where we are, Cheshire East, the food collection bins have been delivered but cannot be used yet until October. New collection dates will be issued in mid September.

The food collection bin is solid and lockable. Shall await for any extremely clever animals who can unlock it.

The foxes don't bother with breaking into our foodwaste bin. They just waltz through the cat flap and help themselves to whatever the cats have decided is beneath them this week, despite loving it last week.

Posted twice

We've had a terrible problem with flies this summer. Neighbours on both sides of us, and we, bought a fly trap with bait which proved to be ruthlessly effective but also disgustingly horrible, especially when it came to empty it.

Photo to show - but also censored as sensitive! Don't look if you have a sensitive stomach.

In the end I decided that the traps were probably actively attracting flies, so we abandoned it. (Especially after the second one we used ended up 'growing' maggots too.). <--- vomit emoticon

DH was heroic as he emptied both of them, rather than me!

OMG! Not entirely sure what we'd do if a fox came into our house - and double risk as we have one cat flap at the front and another at the back!