After he retired from the Navy, the Chief became an expert gardener. His lawn always looked manicured and just right. In the backyard he had several types of fruit trees and the grandkids were allowed, at certain seasons, to pick, wash and eat fresh apricots, plums, or citrus fruits right off the tree. Southern California is great for those kinds of things. The only challenge was to get to the fruit ahead of the birds. He read somewhere that birds were inherently afraid of snakes and that if you put rubber snakes from the toy store, or even lengths of garden hose cut to snake size, in your trees that the birds would stay away. So he tried it and voila! The birds stayed away.
Told you all that so I could tell you this. I have a cottonwood tree in my front yard. Two of them actually. They are beautiful, white-barked shady trees that tower over the house. In the Spring and Fall and part way through Summer, they go through phases that annoy the heck out of me. They "bleed" sap in a super-fine mist. It settles on the cars and is sticky and messy and draws ants and bees. In a day or two your car looks like it is honey-roasted. Weirdly, the sap is water-soluable so a quick rinse with the garden hose gets rid of it...but if you use any kind of alcohol-based cleaner on your windows, the sap turns super gooey and impossible to wipe off. Go figure. The other thing about the trees that bugs me is that they attract birds of all kinds; the worst are the migratory birds, some of which are quite large. They sit in the tree and use it like it was a porta-potty. The geese and ducks have a glide path right over my driveway, too. This results in a car covered with droppings that are messy, sometimes quite large, and in the case of the water fowl, sticky as glue. What do those geese eat that makes their crap purple?
Anyway, this spring as the dropping season began, I was fed up. There was an old piece of hose in my backyard that triggered the memory of the Chief out in his back yard in his Speedo, stretching to place a piece of hose just right in the lemon tree. I looked at the hose I had in my hand and thought that this might be the solution I was seeking. On the next trip to Wally-world, I found some very colorful rubber snakes in the toy department. When I got home I carefully placed one on a branch I could reach from the roof ot the garage, then tossed a couple more higher into the branches, using wire "grapples" to snag them.
The next morning, no crap on the car! I was amazed. Not only did it work, it's still working. Well, except for the one snake that we found on the driveway after a windstorm. I am not sure if it was blown out of the tree or if some cocky bird pulled it out and left it out there in front of the car. The reason for my uncertainty is the fact that centered smack on the middle of that rubber snake's back was huge pile of purple bird crap. MamaCharlie insists the bird was making a statement.