American: "What are these things?"Ha ha.
Japanese: "A rot of grubs!"
Ahem.
Yesterday, I was planting our new season's herbs and veggies when I came across a rot of grubs in one of our raised beds. I ended up spending an hour going through the soil by hand, pulling out the grubs as I found them. I must have ended up with about 50. Here they are in all their disgustingness.
When I harvest grubs, I like to throw them out into the middle of our cul-de-sac. It gives the birds and nocturnal varmints something to eat. It's fitting since the grubs were going to eat our plants and now they're dinner for someone else instead.
I've never tossed this many and after I did so and went back into my yard, some of the neighbors spotted them. Excitement and conversations ensued as they tried to figure out how all those grubs ended up in the street. I felt a glow of pleasure for giving them an interesting mystery to solve. Eventually, one of them figured out that it was the crazy guy next door and the conundrum was solved.
KT - bane of grubs, benefactor of neighbors, that's me.
I like the kind of crunchy squelching noise they make.
ReplyDeleteDid the birds enjoy them?
I tossed them during a work shift change, 4 PM. The diurnal birds were clocking out and the nocturnal birds hadn't shown up yet, probably calling in with "morning flu" after a binge during the day. When I looked around this morning, a few were still around, squirming in the gutters unable to get farther than that.
ReplyDeleteI got the idea for the street toss from a bulletin board, but to tell you the truth, it's never been the barrel of laughs I'd hoped. Our birds are probably terrified of landing on the street. I guess I could put them in a makeshift bird feeder, but that would just lead to Maddi gorging herself on birds.
By the way, I figured that if anyone knew what a group of grubs was called, it would be you. No luck?
ReplyDeleteI always just called them "a mess of grubs" and left it at that.
ReplyDeleteThis list of collective nouns for animals is the most comprehensive one I found, but even it doesn't have anything for grubs.
So, I guess "a rot of grubs" is as legitimate as anything. Or maybe "a fester of maggots".
Woot! We've coined a phrase! I thought of a fester of grubs, but it didn't seem to fit. I love it for maggots, though.
ReplyDeleteUpdate: There are no longer any grubs in the cul-de-sac, living or dead. The birds must have nommed.
ReplyDeleteCheck that. The grubs had just curled up and died and were hard to see. It doesn't look like anyone ate them.
ReplyDeleteSigh.
What's the world coming to when you can no longer trust insectivores to do their jobs?
Such fun!
ReplyDeleteA squirm of grubs?
ReplyDelete