Some time ago I premiered, on Nature Network, noch, my world-beating eco-idea, a lawnmower powered by guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus – one must always observe the niceties, mustn’t one?) The EcoMo™ consists of a wire-frame enclosure containing aforementioned caviomorph rodents, which one moves around the lawn to where the grass is lushest. The EcoMo™ is powered by the grass it cuts, and it fertilizes the lawn as it goes. The greedy little blighters reduce an area of lawn of approximately six square feet to a clean, fine cut in the time it takes to mix a jug of Pimms, so a bank-holiday weekend should be enough to cut a medium-sized suburban lawn. Why should one spend all that time faffing around with petrol and electricity and noise and unscheduled trips to the Accident and Emergency department, severed toes clutched in a dirty hanky, when you can sit back and let the rodents chomp away, in risk-free and eco-friendly silence?
Well, now the Spring is Sprung, the EcoMo™ has come into its own. Here is our 4-GPP (guinea-pig power) model in action earlier today, shown here with its Egg-Laying Attachments (optional).
The R&D brainstorm focus group comment thread following my original post suggested that the presence of large quantities of GPp (guinea-pig poop – distinct from GPP as p53 is from p53, get the picture?) left over on the grass might be offputting to any discerning croquet-lover. Well, I’ve come up with a solution to that, too. Clearing up the GPp is easily and effectively achieved with this non-patentable heterotrophic coprophage
that consumes poop egested from a wide variety of mammalian orifices, not just its own (it’s not fussy).
I guess that the food chain at the Maison Des Girrafes might be tightened further were we to … ahem … harvest the guinea pigs and egest our own waste into a composting toilet. Thankfully, neither option is currently under consideration.
However, I can report that yesterday I sowed my sweetcorn into compost generated by the Noble 500. And Mrs Gee has ordered one of these:
a kind of rubber siphon thingy called a drought-buster (think of an old-fashioned pipette filler) which we’ll use to siphon our bathwater out of the window at need and into a tank, for watering the garden in the summer – for those times when our rain barrels are at their lowest and our watering needs are greatest. (Note – the yellow plastic duck is not included).
Henry – thank you for existing. After breaking my back in the last hosepipe ban, I’ve been wanting for ages to siphon unneeded water into my garden from the first floor. Let us know whether Mrs Gee’s new toy performs satisfactorily.
p.s. Are you worried about phosphates?
Thanks Jenny – One Endeavours To Give Satisfaction. Phosphates. Yes, they keep me awake at night. But seriously, Mrs Gee believes she knows of a line of Eco-bath-wash-stuff which is fine for such purposes. I have heard, though, that ex-bathwater can get a bit niffy if left to hang around in a tank for too long. So the plan will be to keep the used bathwater (it’s called ‘grey water’ in the trade) for the times we really need it, such as high summer, when the cucumbers and tomatoes need the most watering, but the other rain barrels have run out.
However, I have plans for yet another rain barrel in any case. At the moment I have a 200-liter tank working off my summerhouse roof (I used the old guttering from the house, when it was replaced last year); and I’ve just installed a 100-liter barrel off a rainwater diverter from my conservatory. But the main roof remains untouched, so I have plans to install another rainbarrel to act as a reservoir to compensate from evaporative losses from my pond. As it’s only a small pond, these losses are considerable – and right now it’s just squirming with tadpoles. Soon we’ll be waking up to a four-rainbarrel lifestyle.
Advanced testing of the prototype EcoMo™ has hit a snag. After chomping through about 12 square feet of lawn, the guinea pigs are absolutely stuffed, and have retired for digestive purposes. The developed model will have to keep a few hungry guinea-pigs in reserve.
Aha. Clearly, as was alluded to in a previous post, may it not be the case that if the guinea pigs happened upon some of your special mushrooms – getting “the munchies” would boost the EcoMo™ GPP?
Our rabbit thought she had a cunning plan to do even better than the EcoMo, by escaping from her hutch and so being able to roam free across the lawn without the need for us to keep moving the run. Not many pets are so thoughtful wrt their owners.
Unfortunately the local foxes considered her more on the menu than on the payroll. So our only remaining options are four dwarf hamsters (don’t eat much grass) or one gormless golden retriever (does sometimes eat grass, but not very much and is usually sick afterwards).
Our rabbit thought she had a cunning plan to do even better than the EcoMo, by escaping from her hutch and so being able to roam free across the lawn without the need for us to keep moving the run. Not many pets are so thoughtful wrt their owners.
Our rabbit, Beelzebun Demon Bunny of DOOM, has been similarly considerate.
When we tried to confine her to her hutch, she perpetually tunneled her way out. At first she tried to conceal this by covering the hole with a vaulting horse and shaking the dug dirt out of her trouser turnups. When she was rumbled, though, she was absolutely brazen, was very difficult to catch, and when caught, was extremely vicious.
So when I chickenproofed the garden we let Beelzebun Demon Bunny of DOOM roam free, and she has become much friendlier – and the hutch whence she tunneled was converted into the prototype EcoMo™. The vet, on injecting Beelzebun Demon Bunny of DOOM against myxomatosis, said that Beelzebun Demon Bunny etc. etc. was much healthier as a free-range
prey itemlagomorph, as grass should form the majority of a rabbit’s diet. There is a risk of foxes, though, but we’re not too worried. Beelzebun Demon Bunny of DOOM has been known to terrorize cats, and she is kept physically fit by the heterotrophic coprophage, who chases her round and round the garden to within ahare’shair’s breadth of her life.Sometimes Beelzebun etc. etc. confuses everyone, including herself, by pretending she’s a chicken. That would fool ’em.
@Graham – good point. All the mushrooms would have been eaten by chickens/bunnies/dog/cats/children. But I could start the guinea pigs off on red smarties.
@Brian – Mrs Gee and I did think about hamsters, but plans for the MicroMo™ failed even before they got to the design stage. The project team here at the Maison Des Girrafes Research Institute identified several problems.
1. Hamsters are nocturnal, so your MicroMo™ would have to be put out at night.
2. Hamsters are rather like teenagers in that they don’t really eat things – they crop things and stuff them in their cheek pouches for later regurgitation in their bedrooms.
3. Hamsters are, again, like teenagers, in that if you put males and females together unsupervised, they will shag each other senseless. If you put males together, they’ll kill one another. They’ll do this even without first getting blasted out of their tiny minds om Bacardi Breezers and vandalizing a bus shelter. In any case, they won’t eat much grass (though they might smoke it), and a single-hamster MicroMo™ – which is what you’d be left with – wouldn’t be able to cut the average deer park before the heat death of the next Universe but three.
The recommendation from the MDGRI was that a hamster-powered MicroMo™ might be fine if you had a very small lawn too awkward to cut by any other means – in, say, a window box.
If you put males together, they’ll kill one another.
This apparently doesn’t apply to dwarf hamsters, which are typically sold in same-sex pairs. One of our girls has an allegedly female pair, the other an allegedly male pair. We live in constant terror that there will be confusion and we’ll end up with mixed pairs and subsequent ooh-la-la. (I’ve just been reading about French giant hamsters, so I’m convinced all hamsters speak French.)
Thanks Brian – the Hamsters at the Maison Des Girrafes are of the Syrian variety, and therefore quite distinct from the dwarf hamsters chez Clegg. Nippy and Zippy are both males, and growl at each other from separate enclosures (well, if hamsters could growl, or even see beyond their own noses … well, you get the idea).
Dr Gee—I was under the impression from last year’s tantalizing teaser that I was in line for beta-testing of the Eco-Mo™. When may I expect my prototype, as the substrate is now about half a foot high in my yard? Presumably height can be flexible?
Presumably height can be flexible?
I think the guinea pigs can be fitted with stilts. Alternatively you might want to hire a goat.
@Jenny: Let us know whether Mrs Gee’s new toy performs satisfactorily.
The drought-buster arrived, and, several meters of downpipe, hosepipe, cable ties, bath sealant, teetering up ladders drilling holes in walls and a 200-litre water butt later – it works!
I ran a ‘test bath’ just to see if the siphon worked as promised. The bathwater disappeared through the tube and out of the window as if by Archimedean magic. Mrs Gee and I rushed downstairs like excited teenagers to find that the water really had arrived in the external tank, as planned.
Woo-hoo!
I installed another diverter kit on the main house rainwater downpipe to feed into another 200-litre water-butt all at the same time.
All the while Mrs Gee was pricking out beetroot, spring onion and most of all tomato seedlings into pots custom-made from sawn-off lucozade bottles, so that the conservatory has become Tomatopia.
And now we’re absolutely knackered. Saving the planet is bloody hard work.
Further advanced testing of the prototype EcoMo™ shows that the GPp problem is not the problem we first thought. Careful Darwinian-style observation of a patch of recently egested GPp on the lawn reveals that even without help from the non-patentable heterotrophic coprophage, earthworms simply swarm to the surface and slurp it up.