more vermin

There are a few non-tickling terrorists on the island.

Cane spiders are really big spiders with black and yellow stripes. The look of them is enough to scare you, although they are harmless. Their webs will one day be the new unbreakable fiber of choice for clothing that never wears out.

Slugs are bigger and more plentiful here, I think. They also pop in a disgusting way when you forget your slippahs and walk on one at night. No forget da slippahs.

Mice and rats. We live on the edge of the jungle. Civilization skirts the other edge of the jungle, but between them and us is a swath of wilderness sufficient to house rodentia. The field mice are so cute. Mrs. Brisby and the gang don't bother me much. In fact, I was willing to live with her, but she got pretty brash and was begging from the table beside the dog on the morning before a big sleepover with eight teenage girls. We decided to put out sticky traps. Fifteen mice later, the mickocide was over... or so we thought. One little sleepover guest had a bandaid on her finger the next morning from when she tried to free yet another mouse from the glue and the ungrateful thing bit her.

Once we cleared out the little guys (the mice, not the girls), the big ones moved in. They would run along the garage door rail and up into the attic. One nested in the linen closet and stared down the dog and me late at night when we tried to shoo it outside. Another moved down the window screen in a weird silhouette backed by a moonlit sidewalk, disappearing behind the refrigerator except for scuttling noises when I turned on the light. They would leave patches of grey hair in the rat-sized glue traps, along with hate notes and vile warnings scratched into the surface. But we couldn't catch 'em.

Until last night. Last night a rat got stuck right in our bathroom trap, and it dragged the plastic tray over the tile floor, flopping and scratching all night. Sometimes I would hear its watery chirping noises to the other similar noises outside (I had thought all this time that this noise was from crickets. It is a chorus of rats...) Sometimes this one just screamed. I didn't want to deal with it while it was in high energy. I waited and then fell asleep, having imagined it to have grown to the size of the bathroom itself, with only one paw stuck in the trap so it couldn't turn the door handle to come out and slap me with the glue trap...

In the morning, there it was. It wasn't ugly like many rats. It was a beautiful huge mouse with a really long tail. David was sweet enough to wrestle it to the ground, hog tie it, and drag it out to the rubbish. Isn't the trash barrel supposed to be rat heaven?