I don't have a fear of wildlife. I like wildlife. I just don't want them in my house. Now mind you, my house isn't Biltmore, or even Taliesin. My house is 1967 Rollohome trailer-trash with Victoriana delusions. It's affordable (until the latest energy price spikes which made my heating bill look more like the national debt when I first saw the bill for January. This is the Upper Midwest remember, it gets COLD here.)
My first indication that the outside was trying to move into my abode was a dark flash of movement that I saw out of the corner of my eye while watching TV late one night. Followed by a rustling sound in the vicinity of my recycling bags and since that side of my abode is completely devoid of duct work I know it isn't the furnace. So I make a mental note to stop at Wal-mart to purchase rodent bait. We (yes, sometimes I refer to myself in the third person- hazards of living alone) are going to nip this in the bud. I like to personalize my challenges so I name the bugger Roland.
Next day I purchase a box of rodent food (read POISON) which is conveniently packaged in neat little bags that the little critters are supposed to eat their way through to get to the goodies inside, and place them strategically ( I was trying to be Patton, Rommel, Grant and Lee) around the house where I think the little shits are running. I figure that with in a couple of days I should see shredded paper and then begin to look for corpses. At least that's what the package said.
Well, stuff happens, Mom, Sister, exhaustion, work --- basically life and some two weeks or more, I'm a bit fuzzy with how much time had passed but it was more than a couple of days, and I notice that one of the bags of bait seems to be unmolested. So I go check the others. They are also unmolested. Shit. But I'm not hearing Roland and his buds running around so I'm thinking maybe they got the hint and decided that I had made them an offer they couldn't refuse, basically, leave -or come for dinner and get whacked.
I had told Mom about Operation Kill Roland and she, having little else besides AMC channel movies to entertain her, regularly asked about Roland's welfare. I think she was secretly was rooting for Roland and his buds, but was more than willing to supply boxes of D-con.
About a month later I hear a rustling under a bookshelf and go looking and find shredded paper. Ok- seems to be working. A week or so later check some other spots and find more shredded paper and empty bait bags. Ok- good- took a little longer than the box said but hey- we should be finding corpses now. I go on a forensic body search and find nothing. Ok- it had warmed up outside- maybe I won't have to start sniffing for the ---well you get the idea.
I find no evidence of bodies and I'm not hearing the little shits so I'm thinking sweet, until 530 am one morning and I am rudely awakened from my peaceful slumber by the sound of scratching and running from right behind my headboard. I make a mental note to buy more D-con. The next night at 530 am again I am awakened from my slumber by the same cacophony from the previous night. I make a mental note to find the missing nuclear missiles from The Former Soviet Union to make a preemptive strike, fallout be damned.
Informing Mom of this latest setback in Operation Kill Roland- she suggests that I should ask her next door neighbor if I could borrow his cat for a couple of weeks in the hopes that Mother Nature can accomplish what the chemistry geniuses at Reckitt Benckiser can't. I do inquire of my neighbor about his feline's rodent hunting abilities and am laughingly informed that his cat wouldn't know what to do about a mouse if one came up and wiggled its tail in the cat's face. But he sympathises with me and I wonder if he would save cat hair that he vacuums up that I could possibly place in strategic places as a deterrent. (Once again trying to think like Caesar, Alexander, and Genghis Khan, or possibly Hadrian and his wall.)
I have since decided that the Hadrian strategy is to be implemented next. I will have to find some kind of trap or bait system that will work outside, under the trailer in the hopes that I can get Roland before he gets in. This strategy will be easier to implement now that there is not 14 inches of snow in the way of the access panels of my skirting.
So at this time Operation Kill Roland is beginning to look like it's going to be a long and protracted affair much like the search for Osama bin Laden. I however, have decided to adopt an attitude like Churchill in WW2- We shall fight Roland on the land, in the kitchen, and in the cupboards and this trailer will never surrender.
