mother nature
All it takes is a few days of warm weather, and nature rears her ugly head, giving us a preview of what's in store this summer. Snapshots:
I'm sweating because it's 70 and sunny and I'm wearing a jacket and leather gloves while hacking away at brambles that are crowding some little trees that will one day form a windbreak. I'm not sure which is worse--the heat, or the threat of ticks, poison ivy, and the rampant thorny brambles. X has already gotten poison ivy and we've both found ticks crawling up our legs, under our pants. My head itches from real or imagined ticks, and I wonder whether I would even be able to detect an attached tick while washing my hair.
I go to my car to get potting soil from the trunk. I open the trunk and see a mouse scurry out of sight. What else is in the trunk? A pair of boots, a piece of packing paper, now chewed to shreds, a pillow and a mattress pad in unsealed plastic bags. I warily sniff the pillow and mattress pad and am not hit with the signature mouse pee odor, so I carry them to the front porch. Then I notice that my mattress pad is not alone in its bag; it is accompanied by four tiny blind eraser mouse babies. I took a picture and then drowned them. This morning there was a mouse in one of the traps that I left in the trunk. Can the mice get from my trunk into the rest of my car? How does one get mice out of a car? I put a couple of traps in the trunk, but that's only going to work as long as I don't move my car, and remember to check the traps every day.
I'm sweating because it's 70 and sunny and I'm wearing a jacket and leather gloves while hacking away at brambles that are crowding some little trees that will one day form a windbreak. I'm not sure which is worse--the heat, or the threat of ticks, poison ivy, and the rampant thorny brambles. X has already gotten poison ivy and we've both found ticks crawling up our legs, under our pants. My head itches from real or imagined ticks, and I wonder whether I would even be able to detect an attached tick while washing my hair.
I go to my car to get potting soil from the trunk. I open the trunk and see a mouse scurry out of sight. What else is in the trunk? A pair of boots, a piece of packing paper, now chewed to shreds, a pillow and a mattress pad in unsealed plastic bags. I warily sniff the pillow and mattress pad and am not hit with the signature mouse pee odor, so I carry them to the front porch. Then I notice that my mattress pad is not alone in its bag; it is accompanied by four tiny blind eraser mouse babies. I took a picture and then drowned them. This morning there was a mouse in one of the traps that I left in the trunk. Can the mice get from my trunk into the rest of my car? How does one get mice out of a car? I put a couple of traps in the trunk, but that's only going to work as long as I don't move my car, and remember to check the traps every day.
Comments
They'll take care of the mice for you...no guilt necessary.
I still think that this is not the right time in my life to get a pet, but it has crossed my mind that if I had gotten a cat BEFORE the dog arrived, I could have used that as a reason why the dog should not come in the corn crib...