Category: Personal News

Grand­par­ents are rat mag­nets. At least, that is the con­clu­sion I am rapid­ly com­ing to. As faith­ful read­ers no doubt recall, we had rat prob­lems when my in-laws last vis­it­ed (cri­sis, cli­max, ambigu­ous con­clu­sion).

Any­way, back to the present: my moth­er is vis­it­ing and we have anoth­er rat to con­tend with. We saw evi­dence about a week ago but we set out some poi­son in a child-inac­ces­si­ble loca­tion and the rat con­sumed a lot of it. We assumed it was dead, but today we saw its tail while prepar­ing lunch.

We were mind­ing our own busi­ness when my moth­er noticed a humon­gous rat tail stick­ing out from beneath the dish­wash­er. It was larg­er than a very large worm and small­er than a small snake. Prob­a­bly about 7 inch­es long. Assum­ing it was­n’t moon­ing us I’ll assume a tail length of around 8 or 9 inch­es total.

Paula is less than pleased. I think she views it as a per­son­al insult to her home­mak­ing skills. I pre­fer to think of it as part of a larg­er eco­log­i­cal issue involv­ing our apart­ment com­plex, the weath­er, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing a her­met­i­cal­ly sealed apart­ment.

But Paula is on the warpath. To delve fur­ther into cliche, it’s on.

updat­ed 11/7/2005 to soothe the sav­age beast that is fam­i­ly

Paula’s mater­nal grand­fa­ther died ear­li­er this week. He died very peace­ful­ly and com­fort­ably, as far as any­one can tell. It was one of those expect­ed things–he was 80 and had been ill for quite a while. He’s sur­vived by his sev­en chil­dren and his wife.

I only met him a few times, but I liked him. He was a very kind man and very skilled at mak­ing things. Also, I think it’s cool that he spoke Cajun French at home to his fam­i­ly. A lot of peo­ple from south­ern Louisiana seem just like peo­ple from Gener­icville, USA, but he was the real deal. He was like all those Cajun chefs you see on tele­vi­sion, except he made bird­hous­es instead of meals.

He’ll be missed.

For­tu­nate­ly, he had such a large fam­i­ly that his wife will be well-looked after. Almost all their chil­dren live with­in a few miles of the fam­i­ly home.

Mild­ly Annoy­ing: our neigh­bors hav­ing a loud, late par­ty
More Annoy­ing: it being a karoake par­ty
Pret­ty Darn Annoy­ing: hav­ing Blood­hound Gang’s Noth­ing But Mam­mals on the playlist
Extreme­ly Annoy­ing: lis­ten­ing to it sung off-key with gus­to

Dana is 18 months old now, and her two biggest words are oppo­sites and Rochester (a friend of hers is on vaca­tion in said com­mu­ni­ty).

It’s real­ly fun­ny to watch her say them. It takes all of her men­tal pow­er to get all the syl­la­bles out in the right order and with the cor­rect empha­sis.

Kids are great.

On a relat­ed note, my pas­tor’s youngest son has start­ing say­ing suf­fer­ing suc­co­tash, but is trag­i­cal­ly prone to con­fus­ing his s’s with f’s. I leave the ensu­ing mis­pro­nun­ci­a­tion to your agile imag­i­na­tion.

I nev­er remem­ber my dreams, and so I was very sur­prised this morn­ing when I woke up and remem­bered an extreme­ly bizarre dream sequence.

In my dream I was read­ing an op-ed piece by someone–I’m pret­ty sure it was Vic­tor Davis Han­son. As I read a sen­tence stuck in my mind, “If you sneak around on pri­vate prop­er­ty long enough, you will con­vince your­self you have a right to be there.”

How bizarre.

Tonight I’ll prob­a­bly have a dream about hear­ing Hugh Hewitt say some­thing like, “If you trash-talk a nom­i­nee long enough, you will con­vince your­self she is unqual­i­fied to be a jan­i­tor.”

Lind­sey Haw­ley (who will soon escape the frozen tun­dra of Alak­sa and move in with Paula and I) burst into flame the oth­er day, prompt­ing reflec­tion (and no small amount of laugh­ter) on our part.

Our thoughts:

• We’re for­tu­nate not to have a gas stove.
• We’re for­tu­nate not to favor flam­ma­ble sleep­wear.
• We’re for­tu­nate not to have large win­dows in our kitchen.
• We’re for­tu­nate to have learned of Lind­sey’s pro­cliv­i­ties so ear­ly. New rule: Lind­sey can’t cook coed. And we’ll start stor­ing a spare robe next to the fire extin­guish­er.

We thought our rat prob­lems were over.

No such luck.

Like the Sith, our rats come in twos. We have slain the appren­tice, but the mas­ter is still at large. Lurk­ing. Wait­ing.

We found strong scat­a­log­i­cal evi­dence that the rat had spent some time brow­ing around our bed­room, and Paula was so freaked out that I thought we were going to have to pack up and move into a new apart­ment on the spot.

We here­by declare a state of war on any and all rodents which have the mis­for­tune to be found in our apart­ment. And to all “bystanders” just remember–you are either with us or you are with the rats.

In response to our cri­sis we set out two rat traps last night, behe­moths capa­ble of remov­ing your toes. We awoke to find a dead rat.

Thanks to Jerod for the advice, we’ll keep it in mind for the future.

So we have a rat in our apart­ment. At least some of the time.

We’re not cer­tain of this, but our best guess is that he’s a refugee from our neigh­bors’ place. They’ve been try­ing to evict a rat for months.

And last night Paula and I saw him in our din­ing room.

We set out traps. He ate the food off of them and laughed at our anti­quat­ed tech­nol­o­gy. He must be a stain­less steel rat (how’s that for a gra­tu­itous geek ref­er­ence?)

Our oth­er neigh­bors have cats, and so we asked for a cat toy to set out. We were oper­at­ing under the the­o­ry that rats fear cats and that the smell would dri­ve him to safer realms. Alas–this is a bold rat who enjoys play­ing with cat toys.

So as a last-ditch effort, Paula and I are resort­ing to psy-ops.

We left a note on our neigh­bors’ door to woo him home.

Dear Rat,

Please come home. Our food is organ­ic and bet­ter-tast­ing. Also our kid is cute and wants a pet.

With much love,

Dirk & Emi­ly

In a very can­ny move, how­ev­er, our neigh­bors demon­strat­ed that they have careers in coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence in case oth­er things don’t pan out. The fol­low­ing was affixed to our door, direct­ly fac­ing the note that we had placed on their door.

Dear­est Rat,

Ignore the sign on the oth­er door–they just want to kill you! We looooove you!! And our kid is at a devel­op­men­tal­ly appro­pri­ate age to appre­ci­ate rodents. The oth­er kid will try to eat you. Or your poop.

Love,

The Davis­es

For­tu­nate­ly, Paula dis­cov­ered a hand­writ­ten mis­sive from the rodent at large which she deliv­ered to Emi­ly moments ago.

Dear Davis Fam­i­ly,

Thank you for your hos­pi­tal­i­ty. You place was a great vaca­tion spot. But now that the Robin­sons are back I think I should go home. After all, win­ter is com­ing and their kid would be more use­ful in a bliz­zard, if you know what I mean.

I appre­ci­ate the thought behind your note, but I know the Robin­sons quite well. After all, we share a bed­room (heck, some­times we share a futon).

Signed,

The Rat

Yes, it actu­al­ly says, “Signed, The Rat” at the end. Rats don’t get much instruc­tion in writ­ing let­ters at ele­men­tary school.

Any­way, I’ll keep you post­ed as devel­op­ments war­rant.

Quite a few peo­ple have con­tact­ed Paula and I because they know we’re from Louisiana and they’re con­cerned about our rel­a­tives and friends.

Thank you.

For those who might be curi­ous but haven’t con­tact­ed us, our imme­di­ate rel­a­tives were hard­ly affect­ed. Extend­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends all sur­vived but some lost every­thing.

When I was a kid we used to joke about how stu­pid it was to build a port city below sea lev­el. Every year it seemed that New Orleans would have a near miss with a hur­ri­cane and we’d start jok­ing about how dumb we Cajuns were. We knew with all the cer­tain­ty child­hood pro­duces that New Orleans would be wiped off the map one day.

Of course, when you’re a kid you don’t real­ly think about all the suf­fer­ing such a cat­a­stro­phe will entail. The news out of New Orleans is stag­ger­ing. The scari­est thing is that it could eas­i­ly have been much worse. Times like these remind us of just how frail and frag­ile all of human­i­ty’s accom­plish­ments real­ly are.

Any­way, all this leads me to won­der what jokes kids in Cal­i­for­nia make about the “Big One”. New Orleans final­ly got a bul­let it could­n’t dodge. I won­der when Cal­i­for­ni­a’s is com­ing… I hope I’m not here to see it.

Con­voy of Hope is doing a fine job of help­ing peo­ple. If you’ve been want­i­ng to give in some way, I know sev­er­al peo­ple who work for the out­fit and can assure you that they’re doing a stand­out job.