I'm with Jinx the Cat

(Note: If you're a serious vegan or some kind of animal rights nut, I suggest you stop reading right now.)

As far as I can tell, there are few good things to be said for living with another human. Fobbing off pest eradication duty on that other person is one of them. My pal ST has learned much about getting rid of mice in the years that she's lived alone, and she's passed her wisdom on to me. I know that I have mice in the basement but, without someone to assign to mouse patrol duty, I generally ignore them. A couple years ago they decided to nest in my kitchen towel drawer and that put me in serious trap-setting mode. ST's technique is to put the trap into a paper bag which is laid on its side, so that all you have to do when you've caught, i.e. killed, one is pick up the bag, fold the top over and toss it in the trash.

Recently, I've seen meeces in my garage when I go out there in the morning or open the door to drive in at night. They must be getting in the wall between the garage and the house because Florie often sits in the hall and stares at that wall. They're nesting in a heating unit that's suspended from the garage ceiling. Needless to say, I'm never going to turn that heater on! But the sight of them running up and down the wall was getting to me, and I put a trap-in-a-bag in the garage a couple weeks ago. After about a week without finding a mouse in my trap, I had almost given up on it. Then one day I looked in the bag and the trap was gone! No sign of it anywhere. A mystery. Slowly the realization of what I'd done sank in -- the mouse had no doubt been caught by the trap, but not killed, and carried the trap off with it, to die a slow death somewhere. There's now a faint odor of rot that greets me when I open the door to the garage, but I'm not going to move everything in search of the putrefying mouse carcass.

This brings us to yesterday, a Saturday afternoon of chores and pre-xmas tasks. I'd brought a bunch of wrapping paper down from the storage room, and was planning to sit on the living room floor and wrap gifties but got sidetracked by another trip upstairs for something. When I next came downstairs, what did I see but a MOUSE among the rolls of wrapping paper and Florie circling around it! With the horror of what I'd done to the garage mouse still weighing heavily on me, I didn't want to kill this one. (Anyway, how could I do that without making a mess on the carpet?) I shoved Florie aside, grabbed an Amazon.com box that was in the hall and put it upside down over the mouse. That bought me some time to think.

Now what? Get the mouse out of the house. Catch and release. I carefully slid the box across the carpet to the edge of the lino in the front hall. Not quite sure what to do next, I saw the carpet doormat -- flexible yet sturdy -- and slid it under the box. Then I slid the whole assemblage, with mouse still inside, onto the front porch. Lifting the lid, I saw the mouse lying on its side. It didn't look dead, though, so I ran back in the house and turned off the porch light. I wanted it to leave, but I really didn't care if it did that under its own power or if it was taken away by a neighborhood critter.

Five minutes later, I turned the light on and saw that it was sitting up, looking out towards the steps. Another five minutes passed, and I checked again. It was gone, probably to creep back into my garage and start this whole thing over again. I hate those meeces to pieces!

Season's Greetings

What with Thanksgiving being earlier this year, the xmas decorations were up in Florence before one single flake had flown. I've been a busy little elf the past week or so, working on this year's crafty gifts for my pals. Can't give any clues or post any pix because the recipients may be reading my blog, but suffice to say that my fingers have been flying.

Season's Greetings, originally uploaded by trailerfullofpix.

More on Banksy

There's been some heated discussion of Banksy lately in my Flickr groups, with threads like Is Banksy Rubbish? and Is Banksy's Work Art or Vandalism? Yes, he's a vandal, and yes, his work is overrated, overexposed and overpriced. But that doesn't excuse this recent act of vandalism down in Brighton, where his kissing coppers have been blanked out with black paint by person or persons unknown, which seems not only anti-Banksy but anti-gay as well. I hope they nick the little wankers what done this.

Despite all the ranting (mine included), I still love those rats. And I envy anyone who bought prints for £95.

Top 40

In recognition of the 2000th viewing of my Flickr photostream, I created a new set of my Top 40 most interesting photos. I'm still not sure how Flickr determines "interestingness," whether a bunker full of people troll through each and every photo that's uploaded and then rate them, or whether there's some kind of bot that gives points for color, contrast, composition, etc. The neat thing about my new set is that I used a set generator widget to create it. Here's how it works: First you give the widget permission to access your Flickr account. Then you set up the parameters of your set -- number of photos, sort criteria, tags, etc. You can even have your set refresh daily so that pictures come in and drop out, like with my Top 40 which presumably changes every so often. When you've got it all determined, which literally takes 20 seconds, the set will magically appear on your Flickr page. You gotta love it.

Danger Global Warming

This is one of the stamps of mass destruction by James Cauty. I just scored this print on eBay. Cool, huh?