We’ve had several run-ins with mice in our different homes, and I’ve tried to be both kind and not completely squeamish about them. I’ve even managed to kill one [sub]albeit with a sofa…[/sub] and catch another alive [sub]with a briefcase[/sub].
However, once I was forced to do the husband-SOS call (and I’m only admitting this so I can be in the esteemed company of MsRobyn). We had recently moved into a new apartment and the place had a major mouse problem due to the habits of a previous tenant.
We tried the spring traps and had killed quite a number, but finally caved in and used the poison. I had been dreading coming home to a mousie corpse, but what I got was something quite different. tdc had left work and I had just gotten out of the shower, when I discovered a dazed and confused mouse stumbling around our kitchen. He was clearly poisoned (e.g. not darting for the floorboards when I came into view)…or maybe just really drunk. Now, I knew what to do with live mice and had even dealt with a few of the dead ones, but what to do with this fellow?
So the husband got a quick text message that was pretty much the equivalent of that emoticon coupled with a mighty “WTF do I do?” He called back and offered some advice…but, darn it, he did not volunteer to come to my rescue!
I too am chicken little when it comes to creepy, crawley things. I was in the back yard one time laying out in the sun. Thank god I was on a lawn chair when I seen the snake. I was screaming at my other half. He hears me and is trying to get me to come off the lawn chair. I wasn’t budging. He had to come get me off the chair and carry me in the house. In which time snake got away. I was so scaird.
Then the other day I get in the car to go to work and as soon as I close the drivers side door here comes a big hairy spider landing right on the button for the window. It didn’t take me long to climb over the shifter to get to the passenger seat while I thought out my plan of action on how I was to dispose of him. I got out and crept back to the drivers side door. I was armed with Bath & Body rice and shea butter body spray. I opened the door and commenced to spraying the hell outta that spider. He dropped to the pavement and I mashed him with my foot. Thank you god, for not springing that on me while I was driving down the road at 50 mph. I probably wouldn’t have survived the crash.
Last October, I was visiting a friend (16, my age), in Kansas, and suddenly it became known that there was SPIDER! UNDER THE COUCH!
Now, I already knew that my friend was slightly phobic about spiders. However, I didn’t know that it ran in her family.
To make a long story short, they watched me as I tossed the little wolf spider on the front porch. He was kinda cute, if you don’t consider he had eight legs and five eyes.
You have never experienced roach hell until you have been in the old Oceana NAS enlisted housing area. I went to pick a friend up at her unit to go shopping, walked into the house and they were everywhere. It was like a clean version of Joe’s Apartment … they sat there and watched us with their little antenae waving around. Seems housing would spray a unit when someone complained, when they decided to get around to it. They never did the entire row at a single time…
I will definitely say that any military housing my husband and I got issued in the 80s NEVER EVER managed to actually be up to code. I still have copies of the paperwork he signed waiving the Navy from adhering to code on the residences=\ but at lest none we were issued ever had the major roach problems…
Rodentia do not bother me in the least (I have pet rats) and I’m cool about snakes (we don’t get too many scary ones hereabouts). But flying things make me go completely goofy - including birds and bats - and if the flying things happen to be six-legged, all bets are off. Last summer I was stung by a wasp. IN THE EYEBALL. As this is not the Pit, I am not going to tell you any of the words I said, but I will say that they were delivered at a pitch only a dog could hear. Two weeks later, I’m in full wench regalia at the Renaissance Faire and a bee decides he’s a breast man - and flies down my very tightly laced bodice. Within seconds, I was near-to-naked in the middle of a crowd. You have no idea how difficult it is to get a bee out of your bodice. See, you have to pull on the laces to loosen them, but this pulling makes the bodice tighter briefly (and embraces the now very pissed off bee into your bosom.) By the time I’d gotten the bee out and stamped him to hell with my foot, there was enough of a crowd that I considered passing my hat for tips.
I’ll tell you what, if one more of my Faire friends makes a “bee cup” comment …
Having spent my entire life as a military dependent, I can sympathize all too well, believe me. Though my experiences were almost all with the Air Force, they were more similar than the AF would have you believe. And let’s not talk about our 7 years on Ft Sam Houston Army Post in San Antonio. Their idea of pest control was to suggest we see what the PX had that might work, at our expense.
Their idea of rapid repair was to tell me when our one and only toilet quit working on a Friday late morning ‘to just borrow a neighbor’s till Monday, when we can get to you’. :eek: Our kids were 8 and 10 at the time. The idiot who told me that on the phone actually dared put me through to the director of Housing Maint. I said he could either replace my toilet that afternoon, or I could call the Chief of the Fire Department on post, the Post Commander, and the Health Department, and he could deal with them. And, he would be paying to put us up in the most expensive hotel in San Antonio I could find till he got it taken care of.
At 4:50PM one tiny little slip of a lady showed up to replace our toilet. Hubby helped her out, of course, since she wasn’t much bigger than the toilet. One last bit of snarkiness I guess. Amazing what the proper threat can accomplish.
That is also where they got mad at us for killing the rattler in our yard. H’uh? Oh, I get it… they wanted the skin for themselves… or, they thought the EMTs needed the refresher on trying to save a little girl’s life after a rattlesnake’s bite.
So the husband got a quick text message that was pretty much the equivalent of that emoticon coupled with a mighty “WTF do I do?” He called back and offered some advice…but, darn it, he did not volunteer to come to my rescue!
