I’d love to hear the green paint story.
Our dog Loki has gotten into mischief. One morning I couldn’t find my $3,500.00 hearing aid. I eventually located it under the couch, where Loki liked to hide her toys. It was in a hundred pieces. I put the pieces into a matchbox and took it to my audiologist’s office. They got a great laugh out of it and found a way to get me a replacement for $1,900.00, a real bargain!!
Our rescue Border Collie (gone three years) used to love to eat freshly used wax ear plugs.
GREEN PAINT STORY! GREEN PAINT STORY! GREEN PAINT STORY!
Now yer talking. 
A few years ago a rat came up from the sewer into my toilet. He got out of the toilet when I tried to get him but I had closed the bathroom door against that problem I then turned into a physical comedy act trying to get the bastard. I finally chased him onto a glue trap and peeled him off of it in the front yard.
About two weeks ago, it happened again in my other toilet. This time I was better prepared and put on my think leather work gloves so that I could just grab him. It was still a comedy show, but less funny this time. Chucked that little shit out the front door. Hopefully the flushing of toilets washed the scent trail away.
Did you know that a panicking rat will jump AT you? And they can jump like three feet into the air? I remembered this after the first time and made sure that I was wearing more than a bathrobe the second time.
[puts on high heels, 1950s dress and apron, pearls; jumps on chair screaming for help]
Rats are adorable!!
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Drowned sewer rats ain’t that purty. If they’re jumping at your face it’s more than less appealing.
★
Dillon the Villain is an artist:
Son-of-a-wrek had set up to repaint the barn door. After a too-long discussion on what color (I specifically did not want a ‘grassy’ green), how much paint and how much to pay. The cheapo stuff or the really great stuff? I’m shooting for mediocre, mid-level. Knowing full well it will fade to the color I’d rather have in less than a year.
So it’s decided. The good stuff was all they had in the base. Of course. 2 gallons were bought. That painted 3/4 of the door. He went and got another gallon.
Let’s see that’s 3x$32…well crap.
Next day he starts the finishing. It doesn’t match. I have legendary bad luck with these things.
Hand him the card, again. The correct number of the paint color. Tell him “Do not try to eyeball the color. Say the number!!”
He comes back and says the paint store says bring the wrong color back, no matter some is gone. They will refund it. Yay!
He goes out to get it. And comes back in. He has green paint allover his jeans and hands. I’m alarmed. He says, don’t worry, it’s drying. It won’t get on the floor.
I asked what happened?
I look out on the deck and see a partially green Carolina Cur calmly licking green paint off his feet. I screamed “omg, Dillon!”
He looks at me happily, a long green tongue hanging out of his face.
Son had left the paint can open. He had poured some in a small paint bucket. Left it on the ground. Some was in a roller tray. Dillon grabbed the tray, we think. And shook it, which is his way. Wrong color spots are allover the newly painted part of the door and him. Son went to stop him from getting the small bucket and running with it. Which the dog easily beat him to the punch.
Son tripped over the can. Spreading more paint. On himself, mostly. He tackles the dog. The bucket isn’t quite empty and it goes in, an odd quirk of physics, and lands on Dillons back.
I’m just happy the wrong color of paint was a “grassy” green.
The odd color paint spots on the door haven’t faded as well as the right color.
I’ve grown to appreciate my avant-garde barn door.
(There is a weird shaped green dot of paint on my floor, to this day)
the best animal mouse catcher is any type of terrier ours was a scotty …
How we got mice was well my dumbness and a former pet store trying to be smart …
I had gopher snakes and was buying rodents for them to eat and well one of them didn’t like the mouse I gave it …the store said just to bring it back as snakes get picky sometimes … well I put it back in the cardboard box… and it got loose and started housekeeping because the pet store was selling its unsold pregnant mice as reptile food …so for months I saw mice running around … put one of my snakes out t catch them and never seen him again …the neighbors did about 8 months after I moved a couple of years later
MY cat tried when it was in the mood but liked the chasing, not the catching … What took them out was moms Scottish terrier once rodents chewed hold in the wall in the kitchen she went into medieval ancestor mode and remembered what they were bred for …she caught a dozen mice in about a week … and after that, to her disappointment, we didn’t see anymore …
That’s literally what happened with the previous house that I mentioned. As I said, it occasionally had mice coming out of the gap between the stove and the adjacent counter, but it was controllable.
On one occasion I had the dreadful experience of hearing what was obviously a mouse scrabbling around within the vent of the clothes dryer. I really didn’t know what to do, and may heaven forgive me, all I thought to do was turn the dryer on at the high setting. I hope and assume the rodent made it out.
In any case, the whole house did get thrown away. Not by me, but by the next owner. It was a nice older bungalow that had been renovated several times, but it was in an exceptionally desirable neighbourhood. The new owner paid the full listed price for it, then paid to have it demolished and everything hauled away, then paid to have a mansion built on the property. I think it went on the market only about seven years later or so for several million. I assume it had no mice. 
Don’t assume that. Mansions have mice too.
They just have exterminators who come monthly.
Ohh, to live like the rich folks live…
You know how to get me HOT!
I’ve had pet rats for over 15 years. Once I had a wild rat in my garage so I put out a trap to catch it. A friend said to me, “I thought you liked rats.” I replied, “Well, you like dogs, but would you let wild dogs live in your house?”
Rats are indeed adorable. I submit my babies Bilbo and Frodo as evidence.
I had a store bought white Micey situation, as well.
It ended badly with impregnated mice being brought home. Turned into an incestuous mouse orgy that went on way too long and I had a gazillion mice.
We went on a long car ride, one afternoon…
They lived happily ever after frolicking in the meadow.
The end.
Squeak!
Here’s an old British documentary which shows how the disgusting little perverts live…
In my case I found one mouse, caught and dispatched him and I haven’t seen another. Kind of surprised, as I had the impression that where there is one there are many.
They can, for sure. I’ve heard that Windsor Castle in inhabited by several species of fur-bearing varmints. The salient fact here is not that the new house was grandiose, but that it was new. New houses tend to be better sealed than old ones. My current house is free of the little varmints except for the two that I apparently imported over ten years ago from the old one. Those two mousies are currently deceased, having met their final fate in an unwise quest for cheese affixed to spring traps in a cupboard under the sink, before they could produce any descendants.
The only way my buyer’s new mansion could be inhabited by mousies is if they moved in while the place was still under construction. Given the amount of wildlife in that area due to the huge ravine it abutted, this is actually a distinct possibility. In fact the house could have harboured mousies, bunny rabbits, raccoons, and possibly even coyotes.
I certainly hope their relatives missed the telegram.
Your dryer vent final solution was very inspired.
I’ll remember that.
My contractor told me that was the easiest path in a well built house, for critters, and the fastest way to burn one down if not kept cleared of the crud.
We check it regularly.
He had a thing about dryer vents and a deep hatred of me. So I was unsure, til I read your story. Thx @wolfpup
Ever since I heard about this happening to a friend, I can’t use the toilet at night with the lights out.
I printed this thread out for my son to read.
He tells me it impossible for it to happen. “Oh, Ma, that’s an Urban Legend!”*
He, who has conspiracy theories galore. This weekend has been hard on him. So I’ll wait a few days to show him the print-out.
*Rat in toilet part
Cecil has a column from March, 1984, about rats in toilets. Prepare to squick.