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Ariel's rodent removal service

I'm now thoroughly traumatized after removing the rat carcasses from their little hidey-holes. It seemed like I was the best equipped to deal with the situation among the three of us who live in this building. Plus my landlord hasn't returned my latest call, and I knew the cleanup would only get messier with time. (Cringe.) At any rate, they're gone, and I hope there aren't any (or many) more in places where I can't see them with a flashlight. (Knock on wood.)

Through the magic of the internet I found that someone sells rat repellent powder made from a blend of fox and bobcat urine. I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to have our garage smell like cat and dog pee, even if it will keep the rats away. And anyway, what larger predators might that particular scent attract? I imagine the neighborhood dogs would love it.

In a comment on an earlier post, my grandpa reminded me of a rat war story (literally) he emailed me nine years ago, when we lived in Chicago and had a problem with very bold mice in our apartment. Back then there was no blogging as we know it, but I did have a little web site (we called them "home pages," remember?) and I wrote a story about our experience trying to get the mice out of our home. I managed to find the pages on an old backup, so I figured I'd re-post them here for entertainment value.

This story is completely unedited, even though I was sorely tempted to change some of the embarrassing writing. The layout and the graphics are exactly as they I created them in February 1998, except for a link I added back to this site. Any other links or email addresses probably won't work. Here's my grandpa's rat story and here's my mouse tale.

February 26, 2007 3:18 PM