I think those 50 ft Verey bangers were known as 'shellcrackers'?
Crow scarers, those bangers on a slow fuse, infuriated 'cement-head' at RAF Chivenor during one of our early dining-in nights. Someone had acquired them from a local agricultural supply place and placed them around the outside of the wooden hut we called the Mess. At regular intervals a loud bang would interrupt the speeches most effectively.
A Met balloon filled with that French Chalk we used on immersion suit seals was also tethered with a piece of black cotton up in the dining room ceiling - and some of that slow burning fuse had been attached. Thus at the moment critique there was a muffled pop and fine snow descended, covering all those within range.
'Long grass' policy helped many aerodrome bird issues - the length of grass being such that birds could neither hide in it nor walk across the top. It was just long enough to poke the average blackbird-sized bird in the chest, which annoyed them sufficiently to persuade them to go elsewhere.
I was at pre-pongo Wattisham when the SATCO became rather vexed at the length to which the contractor had allowed the grass to grow. Rather than keeping to the 'long grass' policy, the grass was clearly being grown long enought to be used for hay making, a nice little earner for the contractor. Which he emphatically denied - until SATCO and I were chatting and watched a tractor go past the crewroom window towing a 4-wheel rotary hay rake! The very long grass was subsequently mown to the correct length PDQ!