| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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It is a cute little brownish grey rat. It comes in through a gap between the linoleum and the kitchen cabinet. It ruined the last six slices of a loaf of bread. It ate some pasta. It fucks with me in the middle of the night. I have a rat trap. I have two. It would be simple to set one and put it in the middle of the kitchen floor and catch me a rat. I did that in my little house in the mountains. There was a wood rat in the wall behind my headboard that ran back and forth in the middle of the night. The cats would jump left, right, left, right on the bed. I set the trap in the third bedroom and broke the neck of this little beast. I could do it again. It would be a simple solution to this rat issue. I walk out to the kitchen and say to the air "Rat, I am going to kill you if you don't go away on your own." My window is open and people surely hear me. I'm sure they all think I am crazy by now anyway. "Rat, I am going to break your neck and it will not be pleasant for either of us. You are crafty but no match for me. Your hunger will be your end. Won't you just go?" I almost set the trap the day I discovered the bread. I was all set to have a PB&J. I always grab the bread last, having set out the PB and the J and the knife and the paper towel work surface. I grabbed the bread and the corner felt soft and I looked and there was a neat little hole and a tunnel consumed to slice four. Slice five and six were unmolested. I guess I could have still had a sandwich. But there is something about rat breath that makes me nervous. I can probably blame that one on my mom. me: "we came home one day and the dog came up to us with a toy in his mouth and we were like 'Hi Nemo!' and he dropped the toy and it was a dead squirrel" mom: "the plague!" Nervous about rat breath but not nervous enough to break its neck. I should set out a dish of cream and give it a name. goddamnit. |
i stopped naming the ants when i got to a few thousand :) |
I found him behind the stove earlier tonight. I shined my light on him and he bolted in the other direction and ran across the kitchen and up into the cabinet. Later, I heard him again and went naked into the kitchen with my thumping stick. I peered back behind the fridge and behind the stove and saw the shadow of his little body. I rattled the thumping stick between the fridge and the wall and when the rat shot out the other side I was there to smack the floor. I am far more cunning, rat. He shot up in the air and spun about and took off running into my living room. A game! He is adorable when he runs with his tail a flagpole in the air. Had he not changed course I would have violated his structural integrity with a swift swing of the thumping stick. Which poses a bit of a contradiction. Ah, sweet contradictions. I am in love with the contradictions. Because in the end, there is no such thing as contradiction. Only lack of understanding. My greatest friends these days are personifications of abstract ideas. Contradictions and the loss of the control. The antithesis of my prior stability is now the ambrosia of my existence. And I take that first part back. I'm not sure that you naming a few thousand ants is hyperbole. |
. The personification of abstracts is fun, but he gets me into trouble on occasion. |
That's what i did with my late night cupboard friend. When i went to home depot, the clerk in the 'pest control' section was a little too keen on dead rodents. His eyes lit up. "Got mice, eh? yeah, nasty little fuckers! You'll want one of these things then. *pulls out huge steel box trap* See, ya just spread a little peanut butter on the lid here and they crawl in but they CANT GET OUT! Just buy some of this poison peanut-flavour paste and it'll do the job right. Kills 10 or 20 at a time." "uhm, there's only one." "Hey, you know what the thing with rats is? if you put this trap in your basement and 15 of them crawl in, only one will be left in the end because they EAT eachother! that's how fuckin DIRTY they are! I'snt that sick? Dirty little bastards. But this will kill them real nice." "i, uh, don't want to kill it." "oh. I see. well i guess you need one of these then." *tosses humane trap sadly to me.* |
the kitchen one week, the bathroom the next, the side door by the cat food. Poor cats would walk in too see their grub had been raided. Formula 409 worked well. Like nate, I talked to them. Sent warnings. Psych ops. When I would spray some 409, wiping out a battalion, i left the dead for the troops in the rear to see. i want to send a message. come here, and you die. its that simple. |
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I think that is why I have so many nightmares about spiders. Bad spider karma. Sherpa. |
they've been so slick as to come through the electrical socket. they thought i wouldnt spray the 409 there, but they didnt realize i had duct tape. |
To date I have had 10 incidents, and they have each shaved a month off my life, I am hyperbolically certain. In other news, my landlord has agreed to fix the ceiling in my bathroom, which will alleviate my fear that a roach will drop on my head while I shower. |
and for whatever reason they don't freak me out at all. they are very tiny. i suppose i could have blocked the area that they seem to come from, but they just want food. i figure they'll be done sometime. |
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would you give it a name and fuck with it but let it be for an indefinite period of time if it wasn't a rat but rather a cockroach? |
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grits? are you serious? have you actually tried this with success J? |
Just clean the area very well. That first removes their food supply. Secondly, it removes the scent trail. So they will stop coming. But, you've got to remove their food source. Otherwise, they will never stop. I've had to have an exterminator come to my house to keep the bugs a bay. They just ignore any thing I put down. |
The ones that they crawl into and then crawl out of. We had a bad ant problem in my first basement appartment and bought a 4 pack of them, put them wherever there was a lot. Within a week it was a complete ant hollocaust. It slaughtered them so efficiantly we started feeling sorry for them, as we'd walk into the furnace room and the floor would seem to have a black peppered pattern. Sweep the floor, dispose of the dead, and the next day there would be more. It went on for weeks. In the bathroom you could watch the living dragging the dead across the floor, only to colapse in convulsions themselves. Sort of touching. anyway, they work great. |
I've tried them several times and had no luck at all. |
my nanny used cinnamon one day, before i taught her my 409 method. at first i was like..."wha?" but then i went to sweep the cinnamon off my back steps and all of sudden i felt like i had taken a big up close snort of some cayenne pepper. i can see why it worked. |
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yes, taking away their obsession reduces the number that are around to barely significant don't they leave when seasons change? |
BISHKEK. Sept 20 (Interfax) - An unusual breed of rats is inflicting damage on Kyrgyzstan's Dzhalal-Abad region. The rats "are killing numerous farm birds, are damaging grape and corn crops, and have destroyed 14 hectares of grain in one of the districts. These rats can climb trees and are destroying apples, pears and other fruit. The rat invasion may also give rise to different epidemics," parliament member Dooronbek Sadyrbayev told Interfax. The rats frequently attack people and young children are especially vulnerable. Sanitary services are unable to deal with the situation. "The enormous amount of rats cannot be estimated," he said. The rats are not susceptible to typical poisons. An Uzbek specialist bred the species by crossing an ordinary rat with a muskrat, he said. The parliament members asked the government to resolve the problem. [KZ EUROPE ASIA EEU EMRG ODD] sa tj <> |
i've never tried your hippie, lacksidasical approach to the ant matter. they seem to only be a problem when its really really hot, so I would assume they arent a problem in december but im not sure why anyone would want to find out. |
The birch says he cannot tell. Just then a woodpecker lands on the sapling. The birch says, "Wood- pecker, you are a tree expert. Can you tell if that is a son of a beech or a son of a birch?" The woodpecker takes a taste of the small tree. He replies: "It is neither a son of a beech nor a son of a birch. It is, however, the best piece of Ash I have ever put my pecker in." |
WHY. |
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Should I get a breast reduction? These things are not related. |
so, what is a 'Nate moment' ? |
I was doing something stressful and the first person I thought of was you--as in What Would Nate Do? That's a Nate moment. |
when faced with stressful situations i generally either flee or ask someone to marry me. |
"holy crap." It wasn't holy, that's for sure. It kind of felt like a tennis ball. You're good at this game. |
lol |
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cause i thought it was lavender that was a natural stress reducer. |
Of course, in non-human caused situations, this instinctive reaction doesn't help all that much. |
HmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmMMMMMmmmmmmm.... |
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You just unhappy, they cause pain, or what? DETAILS! (And pictures, please) |
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do NOT get a breast reduction unless you are suffering severe chronic pain that you simply cannot live with. |
What I need is a better fitting bra. My cousin recently had a breast reduction. She had such great bras, I could hardly tell. They weren't big enough for insurance to cover the cost though. |
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see, i'm not the only one who does that. |