A Rat is a Terrible Thing to Waste

I remember when pong, the first household video game hit the market.  It was quickly followed by the Atari system and then Nintendo.

My only experience playing these games was at the homes of my cousins.  My parents thought they had better things to spend their disposable income on and said they wanted me to go outdoors and find ways to entertain myself and engage my imagination.  I have no reason to doubt their intentions.  Perhaps my imagination did benefit from their pedagogical ideals.

Take for instant earlier this week.  I'd never tried to live trap a rat before and with my first success was surprised by the flood of ideas that came to my mind of all the fun I could have with a live rat.  All of them social unacceptable of course, still, each of them hilarious.  It seemed a shame to dispatch the cute little vermin.

I think Tom Sawyer would have agreed, a live rat is a terrible thing to waste.

So if you find yourself complaining that your kid spends too much time playing video games and thinking he needs to spend more time engaging his imagination, you may be right but consider the risk.  You can't control where that imagination once fired will take him.  You might wake up some morning with a live rat trapped in your toilet.

Still, I'm 42, have a mortgage and kids and benefit from the neighbors thinking well enough of me to let me hunt on their property.  Certain things must be set aside in the pursuit of something better and longer lasting.  The rat was dispatched in a humane manner, despite my comic instincts.

But my kids, they don't have a video game system.  I make no guarantees about what they may or may not do in a year or two.

Bad Idea for the weekend

Such a bad idea, I dreamed of them all last night.

Praise for a Dumped Dog

About once every three or four years rats attempt to colonize our chicken coop.  I was aware of it this summer and I have been working the terriers on it every few weeks to keep the numbers down.

When the ground freezes and the air gets cold, I will be able to positively identify which holes are occupied.  I can take down some fence, knowing the chickens will come back that night and we will go out and eradicate the colony.

First I'll pump in Carbon Monoxide and the terriers will hopefully kill every rat that bolts.
Then we'll pump in water, the frozen ground will help hold it momentarily and the dogs will kill any laggards that make a run for it.

Then I will move the chicken feed to another part of the chicken yard and leave secured rat poison in its place.  Fences will go back up and they are enough to keep the terriers out of the chicken yard.

Until then, however, we have to manage the population and keep them from trying to break into the house.  I have partitioned the chicken yard so the terriers can get to the rats but the chickens can not get out of their yard.

 The terriers had worked at it but Musket moves slow in his late middle age and Sparta often runs past the rat in her excitement.

Stoic "the Vast" is a mutt who showed up on our front door and at three years old he is our prime rat killer.  Sparta or Musket will flush them as Stoic sits back, watches, and nails them as they escape.  Sparta marks any scent, old or fresh, Stoic follows the fresh scent.  The newcomer mutt is teaching the purposefully bred terrier.

I let him out this morning and he brought me back a gift.

Stoic "the Vast," yep, that is blood on his collar.