Tuesday, December 11, 2007

not for the squeemish!

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHH! ah that feels better. i have survived the horrendous hideous chore of all times. let me rewind a bit. a few of you know that i have been dealing with a very intelligent neotoma fuscipes.-aka wood rat. now, for those of you who don't live in northern california- summers are blistering hot here. our family doesn't use central air- all we have is a few fans-it's bloody hot. we don't use our oven all summer. this fall i turned the oven on to bake a pizza. gawd! what is that horrendous smell?- my older boy, carey says-"it smell like urine"(burning warm urine-there goes dinner) sure enough-i open the oven-and there is a nest-"jesus mary and joseph!" i was shocked. no smell before hand, no poop, no visible signs of rodent!

okay-i try and be humane and use the live trap-no go-this rat wasn't going for it. okay-deep breath-we try the snapping traps-licked the peanut butter clean, but did not set it off-for like a week. now i'm pissed. this varmint is stealing all my nice cloth napkins dragging them under the stove top and shredding them and pooping and peeing galore! i'm not gonna clean this mess until this beast is dead-cause i'm not gonna keep re- cleaning this mess. it's disgusting. then we try the dreaded glue traps.-still no luck. there is even little feet marks on the glue-i'm totally freaking at this point! we even hit it with a broom once or twice. i was avoiding the poison cause my cats can get into anything and everything- i didn't want to kill the cats. but it was my last resort. i was not gonna have a exterminator come and poison my whole house-no way!!!

so it was d-con all the way!! behind the fridge, behind the washer and all three layers of the oven. damn it! i was done with this vermin! i wanted to use my oven!!!!!!my god-it took weeks!!! the rat that would never die! i finally started noticing green posion poops in the oven-scabbers(the boys named it that)was hopefully meeting it's maker!

i noticed the cats were done sniffing the oven and figured it was safe to begin the cleaning process-god help me! i'm armed and dangerous! it was a 3 day process.
day one: scrape and clean poop and urine out of oven/stove/broiler. lovely huh?
can you see the poison poop? bright green. okay-it's still day one-i'm scraping and cleaning fighting back the gag reflex to vomit. when i come upon deep in a hidden corner a big soft squishy thing-aaaarrrrrrr-i yell in discust(i'm Not a screamer-Not a girlie girl)-i let out a hardy yell that alarmed the boys. this is what i find- the squeemish can close their eyes now:scabbers dies!
day two: recover from day one and spray toxic shit. it's gotta sit for 8 plus hours.

day three: not wanting to to continue. gotta homeschool the kids-put it off some more. fret and fidget and complain. gotta keep pushin! have a beer. do it damn it! almost vomiting- the smell of wet rat urine and poop mixed with cleanser is about to kill me. i push ahead-the journey is hard- BUT
it's done:i effin did it!!! and lived to tell the tale!!! i have my oven back.
i'm so tired. i'm supposed to be at my fiber guild cookie exchange xmas party right now.-yeah right-like i was gonna bake something after this affair. i'm gonna heat this oven at 500 for about 3 days till i even think of using it.

birdsong and i were going to go together. i just couldn't get it together. it's a long long drive in the dark-i'm so blind at night-the canyon road just too much-and it's an everyday to town week not to mention(again) no cookies! so, i took a loooong hot shower and put my jammies on an wrote this instead. sorry sue-i was really trying this year!

5 comments:

Sharon said...

I don't know what kind of rat that is. We have struggled with packrats here and have a have-a-heart trap to catch and relocate them, i.e., make them someone else's headache. Yours??? We've had to park Ian's truck in the garage at night, which we didn't at first, but one ate all the wiring in his engine and we've had to change. It's a long drive into town when your engine's wiring is fouled because of a hungry rodent. Some parts of nature are prettier than others~

Sara said...

And we missed you!!!

But thanks for not baking us any cookies :).

There's always next year, and it's right around the corner. See you then!

Anonymous said...

HI...WOW! That's a big rodent. Christina would have s**t. It could have been worse I suppose, like one of the sewer rats in NYC. You could put a saddle on some of those. Sad you had to break out the poison but he had his chance! May "Scabbers" rest in peace. We had a mouse but Rosie(the cat) took care of it. It took forever for me to convince Christina that a mouse was not a baby rat..lol! I still don't think she believes me! Your oven looks pretty, makes me feel bad about ours...hmmm maybe i need to clean ours this week. Anyways love the blog...if you want to see the freaks come out of the carnival come to the West Virginia State Fair...sad thing is that most of the freaks aren't the carnies!!!

soxchik said...

I am so glad there was only one of those fuckers in your oven or else I would have had to send you my rodent chart! Yes, green pellet poop is unnerving. We have roof rats in Novato (not sure what type), but I hear them every night- gross!

Anonymous said...

Good for you. I'm glad you showed 'em who's boss!!!