Here’s the thing about rats. I don’t know how to feel about them. Would I, if I encountered a stranger who was in the act of drilling into my house and pooping in my basement and stealing my stash of bird seed, up and kill the dude? Would I pop a cap in his ass?
That is an expression, right? I don’t know. I am a Democrat. I have no cap-popping paraphernalia around the house and I’m not even sure if popping a cap in someone’s ass means I’d be murdering them, or having a constipating effect. Let’s just assume for now that whatever is in living in the, um, rathole next to my house, I’m not liable to kill it.
Vast segments of the population will not believe this, but I spend almost no time imagining an intruder in my house, at least while I’m there. I can’t imagine killing an intruder unless he (let’s go with “he”) was in the act of trying to kill me, and even then, I probably couldn’t come up with the means on moment’s notice. You have to plan for these things.
You could have a gun and the wherewithal to use it, for instance. Or, you have to have your grenade ready on a handy shelf and hope they’re not standing anywhere near your piano. The whole bit about bashing someone over the bean with a candlestick or a frying pan is pure fiction. I would bounce off and they’d still be staring at me, and not in a better mood. I can nail a fly dead to rights with a fly swatter and it’s still going to giggle a little and fly away. Me trying to do someone in with blunt force is like trying to suffocate them in a pile of marshmallows. They’re not going to die, and they’re just going to be more irritated.
Not that I am averse to killing rats in my actual house. I’m not averse. I’m squeamish, but that’s different. I’d even share some of my less-appetizing food with a house rat if it came down to that, but I am not interested in sharing my electricity, and a rodent’s propensity for chewing its way through my wirage to a conflagration is not to be tolerated. There’s really no solace in the idea the rat would self-immolate. That rat’s mortal soul is the last thing I would be thinking of as I huddle in a blanket outside in the rain while the firemen drown my house.
There are people who would consider the rat’s mortal soul. Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, might have taken it into consideration. Mahatma Gandhi was a better man than I, and it is no accident that he remains in the Pantheon of Peace today and not his assassin, whose name you will not remember without Googling. Being less famous than either of them, however, I will set my traps without impunity, inside, and ignore the rattage outside.
So I’ll let them be. Once a Democrat, always a Democrat. You always want a Republican next door to come out blasting, though. There’s never one around when you need one, at least not in this town, because they’ve long since moved to a split-level in Vancouver for the tax breaks. They can’t walk to the grocery store or the library over there, but they gave up on considering that a blessing long ago.
I suddenly comprehended the poetic meaning of the exclamation of vexation prompting the outcry, “Oh, rats.” I picture a bonnetted Mennonite woman looking sadly down into the family’s root cellar and really wanting to say, “Those m….f….g g…d…ed…s…a……”
But, she went with, “Rats!” and to this day, we are stuck with it.
Not me. Why go for just ONE expletive – and a tame one at that – when you can string ALL of the racy ones together? Overkill is my style.
Although I have my proficiency badge in profanity, I really like saying “Rats!” It has just the right amount of squirm to it and saying it makes your face look exactly the way you feel.
My neighbor purchased a handgun after her divorce. She took gun safety classes. She practiced at a shooting range. She kept it in a drawer. One night someone burst in the back door of her house. The person was in between her and the gun.
If she had access to the gun, I believe she would have shot the intruder. The intruder turned out to be a neighbor who was returning (heavily intoxicated) on a party bus from a bachelorette party and had given the bus driver the wrong house number.
It was absolutely terrifying for my neighbor in that moment and I am not sure that, if she had shot the girl, she could have been anymore traumatized. But I am sure the court of public opinion would not have been pleasant.
So far I have resisted. Another friend, a widow, is talking about purchasing a firearm and attending gun classes for women. And I am seriously thinking about joining her. Maybe.
How was the neighbor able to get in? Did the woman not lock her doors? If one takes precautions, one doesn’t have to resort to firearms. I don’t have a gun. I have dead-bolt locks and use them. I have an alarm system, and have it armed when I am either out or when I am in bed. Stockade fence around my yard with a lock on the gate to my driveway. I do have a ceremonial sword and a dirk, mostly decorative, but sharp if I need them. It’s a shame we need to think like a criminal in order to protect ourselves these days. But at least I sleep better at night. Especially NOW.
When it comes to home defense items, my understanding is that the homeowner can be found liable for causing injuries or death if the items used in defense/offense can be seen as only being spotted around the house for defense/offense. So if a smoker brains a burglar with an ashtray, that’s deemed defense. Similarly if a vase or other decorative object is employed, the homeowner is more likely to be found not guilty. But if the homeowner uses a strategically placed sword, club or pistol, the homeowner is liable to be found guilty.
In case you’re wondering I have a number of hammers, axes, poles, shovel handles and a cut down oar scattered around my house. Also several 3 cell flashlights, which were obviously only ever designed to be used as clubs.
I have a lovely antique ice axe (Thanks, Sabine!) with which I hope, if necessary, to kill my intruder and also stop my fall.
For some reason I have fear of a number of things (big, messy things that are completely out of my control, like death, extinction, and the ((related)) current regime) but I don’t feel an overriding need to protect myself in my house. I guess if I had an intruder I’d hope they’d clean out some of the stuff I haven’t gotten around to cleaning out.
Same.
That rat would not self-immolate. At the first hint of fire, he’d be out of that sinking ship long before you smelled smoke or saw flames. So set those traps.
I don’t like guns, though water pistols are fun. You could keep a filled “Super-Soaker” handy.
Not sure about the self immolation particularly if the rat in question started the fire by chewing through wires. Thinking of the electrocution risk. When I was in Bible college a squirrel knocked out power to a significant percentage of Lima, NY by chewing into a power line. Its fried and blackened carcass was visible hanging from the chewed wire by its teeth.
I hope that sent a clear message to the other squirrels.
I bought one of those because I’d heard a serious deluge of straight vinegar applied to a cat in your yard will ensure it never trespasses again. I kept it primed and loaded. Let me tell you. There is nothing safer in this world than something I’m aiming at. I believe I might have killed some plants.
So, of all things, I am now humming the Maxwell Smart tune.
And now, so am I.
Any more tips to keep a neighbor’s cat out of our yard?
Position a hose in a strategic location, fully charged, and then cut loose at your neighbor when she walks by.
They now make a birth control for rats called Contrapest. No need for poison or weapons, just use an anti-Republucan method of elimination.
That stuff has been specifically forbidden by the Ratican Council.
As someone who has used a weapon, gun against another human, it’s different than you can know. Even if it’s sanctioned by being in a war.
Now, approaching 80, I still have a gun, I’ve kept it for 57 years, and haven’t fired it for decades. It’s just a reminder to me of what I hope never to see again.
I doubt I’d use it under any circumstances. It’s in a safe, and I don’t plan to open it again. I have to remember to let my kids know the combination, maybe plant clues around the house.
Maybe you could plant the gun instead! See if it grows flowers. With pistils.
My great grandfather decided he needed a gun for home defense when he was in his nineties/dotage. It disappeared when he became so disoriented that he needed to be institutionalized. My dad discovered it decades later when cleaning out my grandmother’s attic. He showed it to my grandmother and being very legally minded, left it in the attic until he had the proper paperwork. Of course it was gone when he returned.
The pistol reappeared some months later when my dad was cleaning out her shed and found it under a peach basket, rusted solid after being covered by a flood tide.
Since it was now an objet d’art, he brought it home and tried to clean it, determined in the process that it was no longer fit to be fired. He then asked me to turn it over to the police. I had visions of turning up at the police station with something that looked like a gun and the havoc that would ensue.
So I walked out onto a nearby salt marsh, found a pothole and dropped it in. These potholes are basically bottomless pits filled with salt water. If anyone ever finds it (by some miracle), it will just be a lump of rust, probably with a pistol shaped void inside it.
Mine is a military issued .45 I was issued when I was a corpsman with the Marines. I think my daughters want me to keep it so they can show it when they tell the story of the spider.
In ’67 I was in Chu Lai, a Marine firebase in Viet Nam. I was sleeping in the top bunk in a sandbagged bunker on night, awake, when a large spider dropped onto my mosquito netting, just above my face. It was very large. I have a irrational fear of spiders. Without thinking, I took the .45 which had been always in reach, put it against the netting under the spider and fired.
The firebase went on alert from the sound of a gunshot within the wire. Flares, people scrambling to get to their positions.
I was reprimanded but nothing more…they needed corpsman.
So it’s fodder for my girls stories.