Monday, October 12, 2009

The Mouse Murders

As some of you know from some of my recent FaceBook posts, I have been waging a war against the evil mice attempting to invade my kingdom.

Prior to this evening, I had caught 4 mice in my garage and one under my kitchen sink.  I promptly disposed of the carcasses and never really gave it a second thought.

Mice are evil, heinous little scurvy-carrying, Hanta-virus infected, scurrying little venomous beasts that only exist to allow us to enhance our trapping skills.

I work for Clark Pest Control and this February will have been there 20 years.  While I sit behind a desk now, in my day I caught hundreds, if not thousands of mice and rats.  (By the way, if you ever need pest control, Clark is by far the best company out there.  Not the cheapest.  But the best.  And I am not biased in any way.  :-) )  Most people don't realize how much science goes into methods used to make rodent trapping successful.  Let's just suffice it to say that the merry little mice that invaded my house chose the wrong spot to live if they wanted to see next week. 

I have personally seen the havoc that rodents create for us humans.  Rodents are suspected to be one of the main causes of unexplained house fires.  They have this annoying little habit of chewing and they'll chew right through electrical wires, or just about anything else.  In fact, one of my neighbors right across the street from me was just telling me last week that she had to have the wires in her Corvette replaced after mice chewed them up.  So, I am not a fan of rodents and strongly encourage you to maintain a rodent-free home.  I feel completely justified in saying this.  After all, we're human and they are, well, they are not.  They are mice.

As of this morning, the war score was The Poor Husband- 5; Vile, wretched mice- 0

As of this evening, the score is now 9-0.

Those extra four mice are the topic of this post.

As most of you probably know, there is a huge storm coming in this evening and hitting most of the west coast of the United States.  While we don't always lose our power, it does happen occasionally, so I came straight home from work and began to use my chain saw to cut up some lengths of wood I have.  I wanted to have firewood in case that becomes our only source of heat in the next couple of days.

As I began to work on the wood-pile, I discovered the strangest creature.  This creature jumped right out at me, had 4 heads, 12 feet, and lots of little whiskers.  It was all attached together in some sort of almost morbid-looking Stephen King-esque way.  It took me a minute to fully realize what I was seeing.  When realization dawned, it was almost unbelievable and tempted me with pity.  In fact, what I saw made me feel bad enough to write this post.

Come back tomorrow for the conclusion of this mice tale.  Which is a lot better than a mouse tail. 

I'm just sayin'.

2 comments:

  1. Travis - I don't know if you remember or not, but when I was about 15, my dad got really, really sick and literally, almost died. The doctors told us it was from rat urine. He had tried to dispose of a rat without wearing gloves or a mask and ended up inhaling some of the dried urine and more than likely some of it got in the teeny tiny cracks on his hand. The doctor said he had something similar to Hanta virus, but it was a disease they couldn't figure out. All because of a rat. People just don't understand how dangerously dirty these things are,...they don't take precaution enough when disposing of them. My dad was so ill, he couldn't walk. His eyes were blood red. To this day, he doesn't heal the same. I am really glad you are address (even in a small amount) how awful these things are!!

    Glad you are winning!

    Amanda

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  2. Amanda,
    Well said! You are totally correct. A lot of people do not know, understand, or appreciate the possible negative ramifications of rodent exposure.
    -The Poor Husband

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