Saturday, July 29, 2006
Drivin' Em Flush
The west wall is done! Done enough for my purposes, at least. I was pondering how to align the east wall, since there's going to be a 3-foot gap for the door. I thought about using the laser sight on my BB pistol. I didn't feel like spending the money on a laser aligning device I may have limited use for in the future.
Then it hit me. BBs! So, I put on my safety glasses, ear plugs (you don't want a BB in your ear canal), lined the barrel up along the edge of the vertical 2 x 4 and POP. Perfect hole in the drywall. Move the gun up, flatten the edge of the barrel against the 2 x 4, POP. I know exactly where to put the board to begin the east wall.
Yes, I know it's a little bit nuts...but it worked.
When I finished drying after my shower the other day, I reached in my drawer to grab a pair of jockeys...and there was a MOUSE staring at me. We were both so shocked we kind of froze, then he hauled ass. Now, in the 25 years I've had this house, I had ONE rat in here. He was a quick rat, my dog couldn't catch him (this was before Basher. Basher would have nailed him), and I didn't have a cat. I finally blasted his ass with some .22 snake shot and chunked his body out in the swamp. When Xena the cat killed and ate a mouse in the living room, I knew it was time for drastic action. Ditto when one went zooming out of the kitchen and headed for Mouse Central, which appears to be the dresser in my room.
This time, I went down to Dollar General and blew a whole buck on 4 traps. I'd smear a little peanut butter on them. Trouble is, these here mousies seem to be very light of foot and tongue. They'd eat the peanut butter, leave the traps unsprung. I thought about temporarily blinding them with the laser sight on the BB gun and blasting them, but that's too time-consuming. I thought of various sadistic but effective ways I could create implements of rodent destruction, but I simply don't have the time, nor do I need eviscerated mice in my underwear drawer. I'm not good with explosives, either, though the concept brought a smile to my face. Tiny mushroom clouds coming out of the drawer, well-done mice removed with oversize tweezers and served to the cat.
Well, while picking up some food to tide me over for the next few days, I saw it. Heavenly choruses seemed to come from nowhere. It gleamed in a plastic kind of way. It's a mouse-box. A simple almost rectangular plastic tube with a hinged lid on one end. The lid is a tight fit. The instructions are simple. Put in cracker piece with a smear of peanut butter. Put in mouse-friendly area. Mouse pushes door open, goes for cracker, door shuts behind him and won't open again. Take mouse outside, turn trap over so door falls against top of trap, drop mouse out. Stomping his little mouse guts out is optional. The trap cost $1.74.
At home, I baited and set my trap, went about doing house things. I checked the trap after about half an hour. VOILA! (PLEASE NOTE HOW TO SPELL VOILA. It's not VIOLA!) There he was! Cracker gone, peanut butter gone, little mouse turds all over the inside of the trap. They're extreme shitters anyway, but I suspect discovering they've been trapped really makes 'em cut loose.
No, I didn't kill him. I took him outside, went to the edge of the swamp, and let him go. I did sort of pop the end of the trap with my hand and he flew a few feet, but he was already running when he hit the ground. I rinsed the trap, emptied it into the toilet, let it dry and rebaited it. I'll check it in a few minutes. I wish there had been more than one trap on the shelf.
I can't remember whether I ever told you the anecdote I read in a book by David Chadwick, who spent time as a Zen monk in both the US and Japan. He said that, in one Japanese temple where he was studying and meditating, the monks would catch pests, walk them to the front door of the temple, then flick them out into the darkness with a shout of "Be happy!"
Heh.
Kevin
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