Room 101

I have notched a count of two dead rats: one by poison and one left by a friendly cat, I think, on my back porch. I am disappointed to learn that a new rat has moved into the house. But, I will strangle him or her soon enough. I promise.

I keep all of the food tightly packed away in glass containers and out of reach of rats, mice, children, and guests. I have no idea what s/he is finding to eat, 'cause there's nothin' to be found anywhere. And yet, a new rat bastard is here, making a hell of a noise under the stove. I've seen the droppings and can assert that this is no mouse. And then there's this crazy episode.

If you want to be freaked out, keep reading. My basement tenant told me that a rat jumped head first into his toilet and swam down out of sight. Yes, he flushed. After a web search, I confirmed that this is possible because rats can hold their breath for ages. They can come up and go down. Below the joint, the area is free of water. Even a person could hold their breath for that short of distance.

A dude has patented some sort of cage that one can affix beneath the toilet's wax ring to permit one's business to be flushed away but prevent rats from coming up. I imagine it's like a reverse lobster trap. I have no idea where to get one.

My question is, what the hell is attracting the scurvy rodents to my house? I asked the neighbours, and they have no rats. I've had rats; they haven't had rats. The mice seem to be gone, probably chased away by the rats or captured by them and served up as rat lunch.

Sure, I have read all of the things you are supposed to avoid, and I am going to stick with them. No more fat down the sink. One is supposed to wait for it to congeal and put it in the green bin or soak it up with paper towels and put it in your green bin. Grease is bad for your pipes anyway. They recommend putting bleach down your pipes every now and then. That sounds environmentally-dubious to me, so I am not sure about that. Oh yeah, sealing all of the holes in the house is recommended, but how is that really possible?

"Welcome death, quoth the rat, when the trap fell"
-Thomas Fuller

Conrad

So, I had a dream last night in which I was friends with Conrad Black. He's been in jail since March 3, 2008, but that fact was not reflected in my dream. I simply showed up at his house and was warmly greeted and offered a glass of some sort of Louis Latour wine. I am not sure why I remember this fact.

Later, we travelled to another property that he owned, one that was in a seedy part of town. It looked like hell from the outside, but the house was rather pleasant inside. The dream ended there. 76 months from now, if Conrad invited me over for a glass of wine, I'd certainly accept the invitation.

I blame this dream on my sickly state. Although I feel much better today, and actually dragged my sorry ass to work, I didn't sleep that well. Yesterday, I just flaked out and watched 7 episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I am still enjoying the show very much.

On the downside, I continue to be in deadly combat with a mouse and/or a rat, and I discovered a cash of food scraps they had taken from me and piled on top of my fridge, behind a basket. How do they manage to climb a fridge?

Damn!

I have a new mouse, or rat. I could hear the little bastard scraping and chewing in the kitchen while I waited for the blasted football game to end. I don't hate football, but I don't like it wreaking havoc with TV schedules. And, I really didn't care who won. I'm just glad I didn't have to play in that weather. And now, I will catch the finale of the Amazing Race.

OpenID Commenting

Well, this is very cool. Blogger has just enabled OpenID Commenting, which means that you can comment here using your blog URL from OpenID-enabled services. These include WordPress, Live Journal, and AOL Journals. You can read more about this here here.

I do have one question, however, and that is: what the hell is AOL Journals? I have never heard of this before. I have yet to comprehend why anyone even uses AOL for anything. I mean, there are so many other good ISPs and blogging sites out there. When I think of AOL, I think of landfill sites full of AOL disks sent to every resident on earth whether they wanted one or not.

OK, OK, so I went to AOL Journals to see what it was all about, and then I ended up following a link to AOL News (who knew there was such a thing as that? It sounds as dubious as Fox News), and then I found this story about a giant rat. Really, you have to look, if only for the photo. Go. Go now. Go Look. Please.

By the way, this is absolutely hilarious.

Cats & Rats

I was stunned to find that I had a mouse (or mice) in my house. After all, the neighbourhood is crawling with cats. One can't walk up the street without greeting several cats. One has to watch one's step so as not to crush them. Most are friendly and run out to say hi. Just yesterday, I ambled past two lovely kittens lounging on the pavement. Of course, as I am allergic to the little critters, I have no cats in the house, which is bad news when one has rodents. I have been tempted to borrow a cat or two, but I have always been wary of cat curfews and I wouldn't want to be charged with cat napping.

Anyway, I had been cursing these cats for not doing their catly duty of killing rodents in the 'hood. Perhaps I cursed too hard, for one day last week, I discovered a very dead rat on the back porch. The rat had quite a severe laceration to its pectoral region. It lacked a tail, making me consider that it might not have been a rat after all, but a closer look assured me that it was a rat, probably a Rattus norvegicus. Flies had descended in great numbers. I dug a hole in the back yard and scooped up the rat with a shovel, finding that maggots had already invaded the beast and were crawling all over the rodent.

This, of course, reminded me of the intact rat skeleton I once found under the porch of an old house. I left it alone.

I chose a new template in the hopes that it would encourage me to blog more.

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