AnvilheadII

rodent removal. I've joked with hank before that those are the two things I keep him around for.....he has the grip strength of your average silverback gorilla and there isn't a jar he can't open. in fact I often can't OPEN a jar after he's twisted it shut. so he lives up to that role magnificently.

but now to the second part. first I want to clarify that our house is not overrun with vermin.....we do live in a woodsy area by a lake so they come with the territory. OUTSIDE please?? a few years back, morning of my BIRTHDAY i'm walking thru our galley style kitchen in my bare feet and a damn rat runs right past me the other way and appears to take a left into the bedroom. I yelp - I have a very specific "really big MOUSE" yelp. so hank AND the dogs attempt to get it. I stayed up off the floor and waited for my rescue.

I said did you get it???
he said no.
what do you mean NO?
well it disappeared.
so that's it????
well what do you want me to do Anvil?
DO? get it! kill it! grab the bazooka and blow it to smithereens!

another year we discovered some dropping under the dog food bin.
we put down traps everywhere and never caught the b@stard.

just the other day when I open the basement door to go do laundry, I heard a thunky sound at the other end of the basement, in the spare bedroom, but thought it was just an airlock shift thing. then today I was taking a pillow downstairs to store in the spare bedroom and noticed what appeared to be dead ants. only ants without legs. it was only three, but it was droppings. DAMMITOHELLANDBACK!

so again I call on Sir Pickle Jar to FIX it. he did grab a bait thingie, and did some minor inspection, says he didn't SEE anything - didn't put the bait where the droppings were, but instead behind the water heater by the washer/dryer. and figured that was good enough. I have had to be VERY brave three times today to go back down there as I still have laundry to do, so I made sure to make noise and announce myself. but this last time I went down, I heard the same thunk, only this time thunk thunk and made a uturn and came right back upstairs.

did my knight in shining armour race back down to smote my rodent? save me? protect me? nope. has he made any move to gather the necessary equipment? shovel, flame thrower, shot gun, hand grenade???? nope.

yes I am an independent woman of the current times. yes I can handle most anything. but dang it....why can't he just go be the MAN and go get it??? I want to say terrible things about his manhood - I wish I was brave enough to go do it myself, bring it upstairs by its tail and say ha you wuss. I don't see a STEP for this!!! I am powerless over rodents and my husband is useless??????

Seren

I am a firm believer that it is the man's job to kill the bugs!! ....or whatever other creature comes crawling through our home

Hopefully one of your traps will get the furry little interloper over night!

lillamy

Flamethrower is appropriate, for sure. I mean, you can always get a new house.
Step to it, Hankie-boy!

Fandy

I have 5 cats and STILL must use glue traps...but one of the cats will cry until I "get" the mouse for him.....like a German Pointer dog.

ugh! I wish I had Sir Mouse Killler. or chipmunk killer, or giant Ninja cricket killer, I found a cricket in one of the litter boxes one morning...that really started my heart right up.

AnvilheadII

trust me, Burn It Down! has crossed my mind!

I can't even send my worthless DOGS downstairs as Della is still recovering from her reconstructive knee surgery and can't DO stairs!

Impurrfect

Sorry, Anvil, but I remember your previous rodent stories and Sir Pickle Jar was not as concerned about being Sir Kill the Mouse as you were. Maybe he just doesn't get the urgency? Is it a man thing?!?!?

Della has an excuse, but maybe Hank and Buckey can go downstairs with proper ammunition and get rid of the rodent?!?!

Sorry about this - I've handled life on the streets, armed robberies and stuff, but put a little bitty mouse in front of me? I'm standing on the furniture, screaming for someone!!

Hugs and prayers,

Amy

marie1960

ya know, there is never just ONE,

Every light in the house would be on, and nobody would sleep till there was a blood bath of death.

I do believe this is one of the rare occasions that I can support drama and lots of it.

oh by the way, i have the biggest mouse phobia ever........... but a rat, I think its ok to call the national guard, petagon, anyone who will listen, or has weapons of mass destruction.

i am with lillamy, you can get a new house!!!!!!!!!!!!

Muunray

Cat's are either mousers or they aren't. We bought a cat that was the rejected runt of a litter because we had a mouse problem. We have absolutely no mice around now. Unfortunately she kills an occasional bird or two, but that's nature for you. We were lucky.

SeriousKarma

The "Step" for this is from chair to chair to table to counter to another chair..... I managed three days once without ever touching the floor.

No question about it, this is grounds for divorce. Now, regarding the division of property, I assume you're going to let Hank keep the house. Lucky for him he already has a roommate.

amy55

eek, a mouse in the house !!!!!!! I had one of those, I trapped it, bought a cage for it and kept it as a family pet. (I know I'm sick)

a rat, yes, weapons of mass destruction are necessary !!!!!!

I have a friend that woke in the middle of the night to 3 rats in her kitchen, she quickly sold the house and moved to Florida, now she is trying to keep the alligators out of her swimming pool.

lillamy

Mice, I can handle.
Rats? I'm with Marie.
Forget the Orkin man, call in the Special Forces!!!

cheekie

They eat out your eyes til you're dead. Everybody knows that dead rats re-animate and then eat out your eyes til you're dead. (Sarcasm/severe rat phobia font button please)

NWGRITS

This made me laugh so hard I was afraid the tears were going to start running down my legs.

dandylion

Well, I am thinking that the pioneer women who helped to settled this great country would think that the whole lot of you guys are wuses!!!
They fought off bears and mountain lions...and then went inside to make biscuits.

LOL!

dandylion

***a female cat is a good deterrent. They won't come around if a predator is in the area.

I am more like Amy in this regard....1. Catch and release....or..2. Make a pet out of it.

FeelingGreat

OK, rat stories, I've got them. When I was married we lived on a farm, and there were rats in the shed. They tried to move up the socio-economic scale to the house now and then, but we had cats and my hubby, who was a gentle man but a born predator when it came to vermin.

He was a sporting pistol shooter, so had a .22 pistol which he would load with ratshot. He would sneak up to the shed at night with kids and cats in tow, turn on the light and then pick them off the rafters as they ran away.

One night we could see a rat on the window sill silhouetted against the night sky. It was gnawing at the flywire, trying to get in, but ran away when he loaded up the pistol. He just sat up in bed, patiently waiting, and after a minute it sneaked back. He shot it strait through the wire.

Another time we had a rat in the ceiling. They make a lot of noise, you can't mistake it. So he climbed into the ceiling, torch and pistol in hand and crawled around after it. Closed space, cornered rat, I had visions of him having his face gnawed of by a desperate rodent. I asked him if he was frightened of the rat, and looked at me like I was an idiot, and said slowly so a moron could understand 'No, the rat's scared of me.'

dandylion

I am so much more afraid of humans than of mice.

FeelingGreat: Note to myself: Never get into an argument with Ex Mr. FeelingGreat!!!!!!!!!!!

dandylion

hopeful4

OMG! Pack your bags right now. I would not be able to handle any rats! We had a mouse once and I stayed at my moms for a week until my X caught it.

I have a friend who lives in the hood in Memphis, TN. She has raccoons who COME INTO HER APARTMENT. Apparently they are sneaky little s*its. Anyways, she has armed herself with a paint ball gun and says that does the job quite well. Now if she could turn it on the neighbors who leave their trash on the stoop who get the raccoons to come, that would be another story!

theuncertainty

LOL Thank you for this thread. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only lady who has a hard time dealing with critters. I'll share the following in case any of our dear F&F members need a chuckle:

The job of taking care of creepy crawlies has unenviably fallen to me in our house. My lazy cat just looks at the bug and then back to me as if to say, "I am not touching that thing." And DS, well, he's happy to stand back and observe.

Anyway. I spent a good part of the evening last night tearing my apartment apart looking for the giant beetle that (I'm hoping?) came in on our Christmas tree and proceeded to climb the wall above where I was sitting. I had looked over at DS to find him staring, struck dumb, with a finger pointing to a place above my head. "Dude, what's the...." I started as I slowly turned my head to look where he was pointing. Only to end the question by yelling, "WTF IS THAT?!" as I jumped out of my chair as a giant beetle fell in my direction. I'm fairly certain my reaction scared DS more than the bug did, because he ended up jumping up on the couch. It may have also scared - or at least gravely concerned - our neighbors, if only because of the sheer volume of our yells and the thumping as furniture and miscellaneous stuff got shoved around the room.

"Where did it GO?!" Where is it? Is it in my hair?!" which was followed by what felt like at least a few minutes of me batting wildly at my hair, even though DS kept pointing vaguely at the floor by my chair. "Where is it? Quick! Go get one of your winter boots!"

I shoved the box of movies to the side: "I should have put them away. Man, I hope it didn't fall in there. I am not sticking my hand in there!" Moved the ottoman. Dumped the small basket of pens and miscellaneous stuff by throwing it at the wall. Moved the rocking chair closer to the couch. There it was. The beetle was easily as long as my thumb, with it's legs stretched out to cling to the wall. I hit it with the snow boot. Nothing. It waved it's antennas, but didn't oblige by either being smashed onto the wall or falling stunned. "Again, Mom! Hit it again!" "What the h-ll is that!"

In an act of either self-preservation, or an initial stage of a counter-strike and revenge, the Giant Bug grabbed onto the toe of the boot and tried to hide among the treads for the next round of hits. As I lifted the boot to check on its condition (please by smooshed, please be smooshed, please...), it made a mad dash around the toe, up the laces and up towards where my hand was.

Which, of course, prompted me to launch the boot across the room. It landed right in the middle of our kitchen. Which was not ideal, being far too close to food and the dishes food is served on... DS and I slowly snuck up on the boot. Peered over the top, and found that the Giant was clinging desperately to the laces. Seeing it still alive, I started to hit it with the first thing that came to hand --- a roll of paper towels. Which, OK, admittedly wasn't ideal for bug killing, being soft and squishy, but it was also something I could throw away. That didn't kill it either, but in it's frantic rush to find safety from the large wall of white paper that kept hitting it, it ran back to the toe of DS's boot. (Recall, this is all going on to yells of "Hit it, Mom! Hit it again!!" from DS and the occasional "F! WTF. is. that?" from me. I'm sure our neighbors were, by this time, terrified of the psychos next door/upstairs. Our cat, meanwhile, was sitting on the back of the couch, rolling his eyes looking like he was as concerned as the Cheshire Cat would have been by the craziness - which is to say not at all.)

DS and I took a moment to regroup and peered back over the edge of the boot. OK, shhhh. It perched itself on the toe of the boot, antennas twitching. I slowly picked the boot up by the heel and walked towards the garbage can, hoping to there to smash it to death between the boot and the hard side of the interior of the can. My aim must have been off, or it felt the air rushing and moved to the edge of the toe, because. it. didn't. die.

"Get it off my boot!"

OK. It wasn't going to smoosh. So I slammed the boot on the edge of the can, thereby dislodging it's grip on the toe. A cheer rose from DS. We cautiously peered into the interior of the garbage can, ready to bolt in case it should decide to fly at our faces. Yes, it was there. "Close the lid, Mom!!"

H-ck no! There was no way I was leaving that thing inside my apartment, even if the lid of the garbage can locked. I'm sure the unsmashable thing could flatten itself and crawl out. And who knew how angry it was by that time. So while it was still regaining it's equilibrium, I bravely pulled the bag (luckily mostly empty), cinched it closed and knotted it a couple times for good measure. I carried the bag at arm's length down the hall, down the elevator and out to the dumpster. Meanwhile DS followed along and stood well back with his eyes glued on the knot... just to make sure it didn't navigate it's way through the knot as we carried it to it's freezing doom.

I have since apologized to DS for my language. And the neighbors, well, if they think we're crazy, maybe it'll be a bit quieter around the building.

I think it's safe to say, that neither DS or I were meant to live in climates that allow bugs to grow to that size or larger. (The mosquitoes here, they may be large, but they at least let you know they're coming and are considerate enough to die out over the winter.) And I now know that I'll be buying a fake tree next year.

In the words of one of my favorite holiday songs, "Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Let your heart be light."

Fandy

my X-husband had raccoons in his attic...he had traps from animal control.....but animal control is not 24/7 on call. the raccoons were noisy and above my daughter's bedroom when she slept there.

His solution was to open the door to the attic when he heard them and fire a starter pistol up the stairs.....my daughter did not want to sleep over much after this.....along with the toilet that had to be flushed with a bucket of water.

lillamy

See, I can handle big animals like mountain lions and bears -- you usually see them coming. You're never going to have a bear catch you by surprise by running across your bedspread at 4 a.m.

It's those little bastards that get me.