Chekhov’s Mistess

The End of the Tail or the Tale of the Tail?

[start]

We put up steel mesh over the rat hole and for the last two nights they’ve spent hours noisily – and I mean noisily – trying to get through. Last night I finally got smart and turned on a fan to drown out the noise. I couldn’t even hear them scurrying through the floorboards beneath our bed.

I’ve been cleaning a lot. That’s the best defense – leave no crumbs. Of course, I’m obsessing over it. Have you ever seen Gene Hackman in “The Conversation”? Remember his apartment in the end?

Some of the mice got through and since we’re starving them – all the food is in the fridge – they started to eat through a wicker chair. Our neighbor upstairs came into his kitchen at 3 am to find three of them. One flying off the kitchen table and two others zipping toward the stove. He thinks he heard them giggle.

It seems like rats and mice are everywhere. I have a kid. He likes Angelina cartoons. Angelina is a mouse. There’s a rat in “Lady and the Tramp.”  This stuff seems to be everywhere. From Browning’s poem, Fra Lippo Lippi…

Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,

And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,

Weke, weke, that’s crept to keep him company!

Did you know there’s a book called Firmin, about a rat “who learns to read by devouring the books around him (at first ‘a mouthful of Faulkner was a mouthful of Flaubert’ and eventually discernable taste: rat poison tastes of ‘Velveeta cheese, hot asphalt, and Proust’)”

There have been a lot of stories in the comments section of my first rat post. This is like when I had ACL (anterior cruciate ligament [sp?]) surgery. That’s essentially a knee injury that I had never heard of until I had it, and then I kept meeting people who happened to have the same problem.

Here’s a sample of the comments:

“Sometimes I miss living in a city.
Today is not one of those days.”

“it curled up and died in it’s hole that it had carved out of the bottom of the house.”

“Only difference is that in the country, we take ‘em out without the law gettin’ involved…”

“i once caught a mouse in a trap, partly paralyzed, and i had to put it out of its misery. worst experience ever.”

“what is a field mouse but a metropolitan rat in training?”

“The humane society wants to put a ban on testing some poisons until they know what the effects are
I suggested we try them on Agents first, that way there will be no public outcry!”

“during a lovely evening with wine and the first meal cooked in our new home…I saw, out of the corner of my eye. a ”rouse“ making his way across our kitchen floor…”

“I didn’t want to kill her, to use a deathtrap, and I didn’t want to encourage her to nest within the fridge or inside my house. The alternative was a ”have a heart“ trap, and to bate her with a smudge of the best, most natural peanut butter.”

comments

Two more literary mouse books: The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Di Camillo (won a Newberry two years ago) and Mrs. Brisby and the Rats of NIMH—also made into the movie “The Secret of NIMH”

Both lovely books. But maybe you wouldn’t be in the mood to read them just now. . .

Good luck evicting the vermin.

    – Michele (03/30  at  10:11 PM)

Jesus, walking into three rats in your kitchen?  I’ve had a few infestations over the years that I’ve eviscerated, but that sounds fucking Lovecraftian.  Why haven’t you demanded that your landlord call an exterminator?  Or is there some Brooklyn code of honor I don’t know about that involves tenants single-handedly battling pestilence?

    – ed (03/31  at  12:04 AM)

But I could tell you another story that in remembering I’m right now slapping myself in the face that I didn’t tell you before. I was inspired by Ed’s comment. Yes, I want to say, tenants universally are responsible for ridding pests. I had a room in a basement in house in Ann Arbor, with copper pipes exposed in the ceiling. The story begins (and I’ll end it here) one night I saw three pair of eyes settled on the copper pipes.

    – Ginab (03/31  at  04:31 PM)

When I first read that, I thought you said three eyes. Still scary, even if it’s not a three-eyed monster. I did have a rat in a dream last night. Ugh. I think we’ve beaten them, though. A combination of steel mesh, poison, and putting all the food away and cleaning like crazy!

    – Bud Parr (03/31  at  09:43 PM)

Oh, Bud. Bummer! We’ve been fighting mice--I think we won--but not RATS! They are scary and BIG. Sorry.

Our very sweet Canadian friends offered to give us some of their cruelty free traps so that we could catch and release the mice.

We came clean immediately & without regret: our goal was death to the vermin.

    – Anne (04/01  at  10:47 AM)

Bud, i think I was nervous about remembering them there sets of eyes x three. I’d pondered “settling” but yes I think scary indeed and I was there! I was in Ann Arbor and called the animal rights whatever freedom fighters to get a few ideas on how to rid these little darlings. I was told I could, in seriousness, get a snake. I forget the type of snake. But yes I could slip a snake between those hard to reach places and it would have a field day (terrible pun). And then I’d have had a snake problem. Perhaps a fattened snake problem.

In seriousness, I have found liquid insulation works wonders at keeping critters outside.

    – GinaB (04/02  at  09:43 PM)

I’m dealing with them right now. Problem is, I have an older house with alluminum siding. My gut says that they’re getting in through gaps between the foundation and the siding. So, my challenge is to figure out how to block their entry. Will expanding foam do the trick? Or should I look at getting a contractor to construct some sort of metal flashing to close these gaps.

Right now, an exterminator has placed poison strategically around the house. In addition to this, we’ve set up both glue and snap traps in what we believe are their “hot spots”

Any thoughts?

    – Mitch (05/03  at  03:58 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: March 30, 2006
• Filed Under:
  Song of Myself: Diary

• Comments:7
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