Holy Smoke…! Someone I know may beat Elmo in the race to get to Mars…?
Oh, well. It’s not like you would have said,
“One small post for Man.
One Giant < BOOM! > for a populated area…”
can you put the trap in the garbage can for a couple of days or until you catch the varmit? You might have to take out the garbage more often or store any attriactive items in the freezer until you can take out the rodent snacks (besides the peanut butter in the trap)
I have started a thread asking what is causing the explosions in my kitchen.
Please spread the word. I would very much prefer to handle this myself. If I do call maintenance, I may have to wait quite a while. Based on past dealings, they are neither ethical or competent. Finally, they may see all the clutter and evict me.
I finally gave in and ordered a trash can with a metal shell and lid from Amazon. It should arrive in a day or two.
I don’t want to casually induce fear, but I am now recalling that a horrific fire in a high-rise apartment building was started by a faulty refrigerator.
I thought I could make a minor good thing come out of all of today’s fear and craziness. I have noticed that the rodents don’t enter the garbage can until after dark. By the time I am off work and have time to take out the trash, it has at least one rodent in it. As I do not want to be bitten by a wild rodent, I do not take the trash out at such times.
Today, I logged off work very early to deal with problems. I figured I could take the trash out while it was rodent free. There were already rodent noises coming from inside the trash can when I approached it.
Wonderful.
For dinner tonight I ordered some food from Five Guys. I order through their website because it’s cheaper than if I order through Door Dash. Door Dash, however, does the delivery. When I opened my order, it was the wrong food. I called Five Guys and was told they could not give me a refund. Even after they found my order still there on the counter. I was told to call Door Dash. Who say they can’t give me a refund since I ordered through the store’s website. I called the store again and was told the best they could do was give me a free order if I came to the store in the next few days. He said he would leave a note about it in the office. I’m not driving across town on the off-chance that will happen.
So I called Five Guys customer service and the rep said he could take my info and pass it along to some higher-up. That doesn’t sound promising. Why have customer service if they can’t handle basic problems? I’ll give them a few days and see what happens. I tried to eat the burger I got but it had everything I don’t like on it so I threw it away. And I really, really was in the mood for a milkshake. Fuck.
Possibly A Rant
I honestly don’t know how I feel about this. Right before it was time to log in for work, I noticed that the trap I put out had finally caught a mouse. On the one hand, they are vermin in my apartment, eating my food, bringing in filth and disease, and pooping. OTOH, they are cute little furry creatures just trying to survive. I wish there was another way.
That’s how I would feel too.
I hate and fear spiders, but when one gets in my house I catch it under a cup and put it outside (sometimes I whimper as I do this).
Is the mousie live?
I am reasonably sure it is dead. I had thought of using catch-and-release traps. Tamerlane gave an educated opinion. I live in a very urban area. If I release them, they will just end up in some body else’s apartment. He also recommended against poison. So, I bought snap traps. The trap seems to have broken the rodent’s neck instantly, as it was designed to do. I really hope there was no suffering.
Oh good. I’m sure it was very humane.
I have eaten whole roast mice, prepared on a skewer over an open fire. Skin, skeleton, innards.
I would not recommend the delicacy.
Definitely A Rant
I am leaving for Florida this Friday. I will be gone for about two weeks. My beloved wanted to visit this weekend. We would snuggle (by which I mean actual snuggling and not a euphemism for any other form of physical intimacy), go to a local restaurant, and after bagging the remaining ‘donate’ pile we would load it into her trunk.
She was sick this weekend. She didn’t want to get me sick before my trip. We rescheduled to Wednesday or Thursday. She tested positive for Covid this morning. She has all the latest boosters. She will be fine, eventually. There is a risk of her elderly mother dying from Covid. But, my beloved is doing what she can to prevent that.
In the short term, this means that I do not get to see her before I leave for Florida. Due to a full schedule and the fact that my sister and sister in law hate her, I don’t know if we will even be able to do our nightly chat over the phone.I need to box up or otherwise make neat and tidy the ‘donate’ pile she was going to take. My apartment is cluttered enough without tha huge pile of stuff in my living room. Also, I was hoping for other kinds of physical intimacy before I left.
Given your prior post, I first read this at “Definitely A Rat”. Sorry.
Why?
Preparation
- Did they just shove a stick up it’s arse?
- Remove entrails?
- Seasoning?
- Cooking method?
Maybe his real name is Varley Monfat. 
All you kids with your newfangled tech will not express much sympathy, but I’ve been sticking like glue to reliable old Windows 7 and I’ve now encountered the first serious roadblock – my favourite tax software now requires Windows 10 or 11, beginning with the latest version for filing 2024 tax returns. I looked at a commercial package as a possible alternative, but the only difference is that it’s much harder to find out that it, too, only supports Windows 10 or 11.
I’m not giving up on Windows 7 or my beloved desktop that it runs on, but I’m going to have to find an alternative platform for tax software pretty damn quick. I’m certainly not going back to the Dark Ages with paper filings, if traditional paper forms are even available any more. I could potentially try installing Win 10 or 11 in a VM – don’t know how feasible that would be. I’ll probably end up buying a new Dell laptop just to file my taxes, which would also be a way to ease into Windows 11 while maintaining my main, serious computing platform. Sigh!
I hereby pit Microsoft and all software developers who go along with all their unnecessary incessant “upgrades”, which tend not only to be buggy but also have new “improved” UIs that are different just for the sake of being different. If I were King of the World, I’d track down all these people and put them on notice that effective March 1, 2025, their electricity supply would be 300V DC, and everything electrical that they owned would stop working, because I personally thought 300V DC was cool.
Well, there’s always the Musical Method.
My mailbox has needed a new lock since before I moved in. I notified maintenanc and management of this before I moved in and several times since then. Today, I no longer need a new lock on my mailbox.
I went downstairs to check for mail and to retrieve a package I was expecting. The door fell off my mailbox. Somebody had helpfully placed the door, slanted diagonally so it would fit, inside my mailbox. Considering that there are several other mail boxes with broken locks, I am not expecting this to be fixed any time soon.
Like a big chunk of the country, we got hit with a winter storm on Sunday. In the end not that much accumulation, but it was just the worst combination of stuff. It sleeted all day Sunday before a few inches of snow covered it up overnight.
Went out to shovel the walk and the driveway today and discovered that the sleet had compacted into an inch and a half of ice which the shovel was incapable of moving. I had to resort to chipping the ice away with a floor scraper I had stowed n the garage. Two hours later I had managed a path from the door to the street. The driveway is still mostly covered.
Now I’m sore, my hands are shaky, my back hurts, and my driveway still needs to be shoveled.