Second In Command
The (supposed) Warriors
The Enemy
The Artillery
*The Story*
Recently I started hearing some *suspicious* activity at night, under the house and even in the walls. Immediately my rational mind told me what was going on. Some other part of my mind went into denial, i.e. "I have a feisty cat and she always takes care of this stuff" and "if this is what I think it is, I don't want to deal with it so maybe it will just go away". That second mind quote is a particularly disturbing quirk of my personality that I *work* on constantly. Seems like as soon as I have it mastered in my professional life, or my personal life, it springs up again in my REAL life (or some other place) and takes me by surprise.
The truth is, I HATE rodents. HATE THEM. I don't want to deal with them, they completely gross me out. And it's true, my kitty has always been a supreme rodent warrior. However, at 12 years old, she has apparently slowed way down. Bummer for me.
I know that another part of my mind was trying to deal with this reality because in retrospect I realize I was ticking off some options in my mind;
Q: Get another kitty?
A: NO! House too small for all we have now!
Q: Put out poison?
A: Remember that time you were at your friends house and they had poison (hidden) and your Corgi found it and ate it for dessert and you had to rush him to the emergency vet on a Sunday? And they gave him the doggie version of IPECAC and.....
Q: Put out traps?
A: EWWWWWWWWW!
LOGIC (not) THAT FOLLOWED: Why don't I have a man around right now that can take care of this stuff? How about if I don't think about it, it will somehow magically go away! Maybe my cat will get her act together! And what's up with those two (supposedly) ratter dogs I have? Why aren't they doing something about this???
Another thing that is so illogical. Why am I so terrified of something that is a fraction of my size??????
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Sunday evening, LG and I hopped in the car to go get some gas for the lawn mower. We had to go to 4 gas stations to find gas, but that is another story. When we got back home, we spotted the enemy. In broad daylight!!! Those little *bastards* were poking their head out from under the back steps, 3 of them, little heads bobbing up and down. Actually, they were not so little as I imagined, although they were not dumpster rats either. And thanks Sarah for helping me to feel free to call them what they are!!! (She was talking about chipmunks and squirrels, but vermin are vermin in my book!) In fact, I called them something a whole lot worse which I will not repeat on this blog (but did make my teen-age son giggle). I felt such a rush of disbelief and anger! Anger at them, but mostly at myself for my silly silly denial. I also immediately went into attack mode. I let LG out of the car and told him I was going back to town for the artillery. I put the Jeep in reverse and tore out of there. When I got to Lowes, I chose my weaponry with a calm precision driven by a sense of purpose and deep hatred. Back home, LG had already taken matters into his own hands and shot one with the BB gun and stomped another ***I was imagining Munson style, with a hobnail boot. Yay! Two down, and how many to go???? That was the scary question.
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So, three days later, and let me give you the rundown in case you have this problem...we live surrounded by woods and trees and farmland. Have plenty of wildlife that we enjoy, like the deer (except when they garden) the family of foxes that lives across the street, the wild turkey, the raccoons and the 'possums and all the birds. And the rodents, the squirrels and the mice which I do not enjoy. The ultra sound repellers that I plugged into electrical outlets worked the best quickly. It doesn't hurt them, it just drives them out of places because they can't stand the noise, which is at a frequency indiscernible to humans, cats and dogs. The package says it can take 2-3 weeks (depending on food supply) to be effective, but I will say it moved them immediately.
Yay for us!
I put the block bait outside under the steps (where we actually saw them), behind some shelving on the screened porch, in a couple of cabinets in the kitchen when I strongly suspect they were partying at night (noise levels gave them away) and one behind my dresser in the bedroom. Places where the Corgi Warrior cannot get to them, or Silly Sidney the Terrier Terror, for that matter. Hopefully the enemy rodents will not stagger out on their deathbeds where the ratter warriors will decide to ingest them IMMEDIATELY (cause that is what ratter dogs do) and we do not have to make any more emergency trips to the vet.
The traps so far have been completely ineffective.
I have yet to call a commercial exterminator, and here is why. Last time I did that at work, for an old building where we were storing a small amount of food, the exterminator would only put out glue traps. The culprit was caught a few days later in the glue trap and one of my employees took it to the dumpster. That was Mr. Commercial Man's solution. So I thought I would try it my way first.
I don't want to get too cocky...but so far the surge is working!
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