tomatocam

New Day/New Angle/Old Battery

2008-09-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

As it turns out, I might not have been prepared for the responsibility of tomatocam and its heavily followed blog....It took me four days to reassemble the thing, then I couldn't bear the thought of wasting another battery--so I used the old one--we did get 2 new pics out of it though before it died for the night.

Also, since there has been no damage in the old zone, and I picked most of those tomatoes anyway, I decided to reposition the camera to a different grouping.

There is a really good chance that the mere presence of tomatocam has scared off the predators--so in a way we have succeeded--but it doesn't seem as satisfying as catching the bad guys, then being in a moral quandary about what do about them anyway.

The other problem is that I asked for help way too late with this situation (hey, but at least I asked!), my plants are wrapping up their season and I might just put them out of their misery soon.

In fact, a certain other blogger and I were discussing the possibility of some sort of fried green tomato feast so that their tomato lives would not be in vain....stay tuned on that one...

Also---I've been waiting several days to say this--but I thought the debates on Friday were slightly more boring than looking at tomatocam pics--Just Sayin'!!

Day 2

2008-09-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

Well, as you know I didn't reassemble tomatocam yesterday ( I hope BTZ isn't too disappointed in me), so no pics last night....but no new damage in the watched zone this morning, so I don't think we missed any action. (whew!)

In case you don't know the history, here's the background:
Many of my precious tomatoes were getting these weird rings around them--kind of like burn marks or self-mutilation cutting marks and I just couldn't figure out why.

Eventually I realized that it wasn't really probable or possible that they were spinning themselves on the vine to cut themselves with the metal framing.
The rings weren't interfering eating these tomatoes, but they created an element of mystery and confusion.

Then this story takes an awful turn.... some of the ringed tomatoes started have puncture marks where they had been penetrated by some evil creature.

This led to my current theory that some sort of predator circumnavigates the tomato many times until a weak spot appears...then it's over for that piece of fruit!
I became clear that tomatocam was necessary...to catch a predator!

Fortunately Bryan is a genius, apparently with an abundance of time on his hands...the rest is history.

Today's photos include an otherwise healthy tomato with the crop circles on it, one that has been thoroughly violated and the mass graveyard for the others!

Tomatocam should be back up tonight...and I have a good feeling about it.

crud--no night 2

2008-09-25T17:56:00.001-07:00

Oops...I forgot to pull the memory card out of my computer --the tomatocam has nothing to write to! Darn it!

Empty Snare

2008-09-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

The ingenuity behind tomatocam is amazing-- I mean really, check out the brain on BTZ!
However, it doesn't look like we've caught the predator on camera*- Yet!
Stay tuned for more compelling images from tomatocam.

* Since I am supposed to be working, I didn't zoom in or thoroughly scan the images...

Also, some images from the series have been omitted from this post...please let me know right away if you would like the complete set of images!