Pests

In other news I’ve tackled a lot of pests this week. I was trying to fall asleep on a rainy Tuesday night listening to that bastard rat chew through my rat proof box. What’s the point of chasing him away when he’ll just come back after I turn out the lights again. So I try to distract myself with the pitterpatter of rain drops, the squawks of bats, mosquitoes buzzing, the occaisonal naos falling and pigs grunting. When all of a sudden I hear a thud on the bed next to the pillow. I get my flashlight on in time to see something falling through the slats of the bed frame. Looked like an insect, probably a cockroach. Well I’ll get that mofo. He’s no match for my Tiga Roda (that’s Indonesian for cockroach spray, I assume). But the little bugger’s nowhere to be found. So I decide to go back to sleep. When what do I see out of the corner of my eye but a huge frigen centipede fall out from the two bedsheets that try to pass for a wall right at the head of my bed. He fell onto the headboar, centipedes are the Sahara desert scorpions of the pacific islands. They are 4-8 inches long and have big old poisonous pinchers. They’re not poisonous enough to kill a human but they can incapacitate you for a few days and are capable of killing a little puppy dog like my Marie who was dreaming little doggy dreams at the foot of the bed. The best way to kill them is to pour boiling water on them because it kills their eggs too. Anyhow I managed to boil some water, find it, trap it under a big bowl and pour boiling water over it without waking my roommate or my dog. They must have been really tired cause I wan’t quiet. The thing about centipedes is that they say that if you find one it really means you’ve probably got two or more. So I’m lying there in bed waiting for the other proverbial centipede shoe to drop into my bed. Ugh I couldn’t go to sleep for three hours but another one never came.

Then I finally tackled my rat problem the next day. This story is gross but I’m only telling it because I can’t believe that I did this. Stephanie from a year ago I think would have been jumping up and down squealing as I did frequently when encountering rats in the alley behind Otherside. But Stephanie from last Wednesday caught a rat by the tail in a glue trap and then chopped it’s head clean off with one swipe of her machete as he stared frightened with his beady little eyes. No squealing, just cold hearted rat murder. He deserved it though for his constant harassment of my condiments. That rat bastard is guilty of the maliciously manslaughter of my ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. Not to mention eating through my not-so-rat-proof rat-proof box. The moral of the story is don’t mess with my condiments, man, or you get the machete. Update I caught and disposed of another rat but then I’ve seen two more since. Damn these bastards are invincible. The good side of the pest news is, the bed bugs are finally gone. Also there is a chicken that lays eggs in my kitchen about every other day. Best pest ever! Chickens aren’t pests you say? Well they obviously don’t wake you up everyday at 5am.