Well, it has been quite a day around my house - quite a week or two really. You see, not too long ago, our dog, Abby, who is quite the mouser (as opposed to our faithfully departed, beloved cat Ariel who turned her nose up at the thought of even looking for a mouse) brought us a nice sized rat...from the back yard, through the dog door, past the kitchen, into the living room, and dropped it on our Christmas tree skirt. Seriously. I have a pic - but I think it's one you want to skip seeing. It's not gross looking but the idea of it just gives me the shivers! EWW!
Our kids are afraid of furry woodland critters such as these and since hubby and I enjoy sleeping free of kids who are having rodent nightmares, we took to referring to them as "Mickey Mouse" aka a field mouse and "Ratatouille" aka field rats. We have tried every manner of getting rid of these rodents, but they mostly just taunt us by moving the bait or removing the sticky traps all together to parts unknown. They had torn down a piece of insulation under the house and the dog was tearing up the carpet trying to get to it/them - and well, we had had enough. It was time for professional help.
Wait - let me back up - I live in the woods, where we have coyotes, rabbits, every manner of bird you can think of and lord knows what else. We are only talking about a few very destructive rodents - this was NOT an infestation. If we had been infested, the title of this blog entry would have been "We've Moved to Our New House!". I'm tolerant, but I have limits!
Okay, where was I? SO, the pro's came out, sprayed to get rid of all of our friendly stinging flying creatures and a few Hobo spiders, set traps in the crawl space and "bait stations" around the fence. A week later (this past Monday) they returned to "empty" the traps - but there were no rodents. The bait was eaten, but no rodents. I felt somewhat validated at that moment. We have never had a mole problem, but one popped up - ironically, UNDER the bait station. These are frontier critters - they don't go easily!
Two days later a swarm - and I am not exaggerating here - a swarm of carpenter ants came INTO our garage! We had also never had carpenter ants prior to eliciting the help of pest pros. We've had other ants, but that's another post. We had ourselves a little spray and stomp fest while ducking the flying ants at the same time. I'm sure we looked just about as close to crazy as possible in our garage stomping, ducking, running, etc.
Here's the Critter Count (like on Deadliest Catch) - in case your keeping track:
Mice eliminated = 0
Rats eliminated = 0
Moles moving in = 1+
Ants moving in = 100+
We called the company and out they came again. By now this poor gentleman had been in our crawl space three or four times. It was beginning to feel like a relationship I didn't really want. In order to get to our crawl space, you must first enter the secret closet under the stairs, remove all kids shoe's and coat's which they have piled on the floor of said closet, move the Thanksgiving dinner table leaf, and claw your way through the adult hanging coats in the dark, find the shiny gold handle somewhere on the floor, then pull. In other words, you gotta WANT to get down there or else you would give up long before this. As you can imagine, after 3-4 visits to the underworld, a mess begins to build. AND THIS - is how it all relates to the mysterious mass in my 4 year old's hair.
The last time my bug guy came to call, my kiddos were on their way to vacation with Grandma. Hubby was at work - and I was blissfully alone, with SILENCE! AHHH! That ended thanks to the doorbell ringing and my ferocious two dogs - okay, they aren't actually ferocious, they just think they are. Once the pest thing was taken care of, I was free to sit down, have a glass of wine, watch my favorite show, and relax in peace and quiet. But who are we kidding here - I'm a mom - I had the opportunity to clean without small people around making new messes where I had just cleaned up old messes! With the addition of the crawl space cribbles everywhere, I had to vacuum. HAD to!
And as I am vacuuming, I notice, under my TV cabinet, a small pile of brown fur. It wasn't moving, so I decided to take a closer look. Upon further inspection, it appeared to be brown hair - and this is weird b/c no one has brown hair in my family. I thought Barbie had succumbed to an ill fate or was perhaps sporting a new do depending on who had gotten to her - the dogs or the 4 yr old.
Fast forward to yesterday, when we arrived at the vacation spot, I was informed, that my 4 yr old's curly and tangly hair had balled up to new proportions. Grandma was thinking of cutting it, but I'm a pro and reassured her that I would take care of it. It was the little one's bed time though, and she was in no shape for a comb out. We agreed to tackle it this morning. Thankfully I did not look at said mass prior to bed. It would have haunted me for sure!
WELL - this was NOT her usual mass of tangles. This was 3 inches wide by about 4 inches long and a good 3/4" thick or so with no start or end point that I could see. It was somewhere between a rat's nest, a dread lock, and a small-woodland-creature-may-be-encased-in-there kind of problem. Maybe I should coin a new term - the rat lock.
An hour later, I was still making my way towards the bulk of the rat lock in my 4 yr old's hair. I started to notice that parts of her hair, around her hairline - especially around her face - were noticeably shorter than 48 hours ago. As I am making my way through the nest, I notice that other pieces seem to be at odd lengths as well. Then, 70% of the nest suddenly came out in my hand. The more I combed, the more came out! By this time I am covered in her hair, a wad of it is balled up next to me, and she is laying on the couch whining about how LONG it is taking me.
Apparently, while her hair was up in a pony tail, and a few wayward strands came loose from their band, she decided to take matters into her own hands or rather scissors - and CUT her hair. Only she cut her hair both at home (the ball of fur under the TV stand) and here on vacation. There's one big problem though - she's 4, and has the fine motor skills and accuracy of a 4 year old, so she appeared to have just kept hacking away at it until she was satisfied. Since her hair was up in a pony tail at the time of the trim, many of the now cut strands were secure in the rubber band yet mobile at both ends and free to wrap themselves up around the hair that was left creating the mysterious nest in my 4 yr old's hair!
90 minutes of tenuous combing later, and she looks - well, like a mess.
I haven't figured out how to fix her hair yet, but I do know to hide all of the scissors now.
Our kids are afraid of furry woodland critters such as these and since hubby and I enjoy sleeping free of kids who are having rodent nightmares, we took to referring to them as "Mickey Mouse" aka a field mouse and "Ratatouille" aka field rats. We have tried every manner of getting rid of these rodents, but they mostly just taunt us by moving the bait or removing the sticky traps all together to parts unknown. They had torn down a piece of insulation under the house and the dog was tearing up the carpet trying to get to it/them - and well, we had had enough. It was time for professional help.
Wait - let me back up - I live in the woods, where we have coyotes, rabbits, every manner of bird you can think of and lord knows what else. We are only talking about a few very destructive rodents - this was NOT an infestation. If we had been infested, the title of this blog entry would have been "We've Moved to Our New House!". I'm tolerant, but I have limits!
Okay, where was I? SO, the pro's came out, sprayed to get rid of all of our friendly stinging flying creatures and a few Hobo spiders, set traps in the crawl space and "bait stations" around the fence. A week later (this past Monday) they returned to "empty" the traps - but there were no rodents. The bait was eaten, but no rodents. I felt somewhat validated at that moment. We have never had a mole problem, but one popped up - ironically, UNDER the bait station. These are frontier critters - they don't go easily!
Two days later a swarm - and I am not exaggerating here - a swarm of carpenter ants came INTO our garage! We had also never had carpenter ants prior to eliciting the help of pest pros. We've had other ants, but that's another post. We had ourselves a little spray and stomp fest while ducking the flying ants at the same time. I'm sure we looked just about as close to crazy as possible in our garage stomping, ducking, running, etc.
Here's the Critter Count (like on Deadliest Catch) - in case your keeping track:
Mice eliminated = 0
Rats eliminated = 0
Moles moving in = 1+
Ants moving in = 100+
We called the company and out they came again. By now this poor gentleman had been in our crawl space three or four times. It was beginning to feel like a relationship I didn't really want. In order to get to our crawl space, you must first enter the secret closet under the stairs, remove all kids shoe's and coat's which they have piled on the floor of said closet, move the Thanksgiving dinner table leaf, and claw your way through the adult hanging coats in the dark, find the shiny gold handle somewhere on the floor, then pull. In other words, you gotta WANT to get down there or else you would give up long before this. As you can imagine, after 3-4 visits to the underworld, a mess begins to build. AND THIS - is how it all relates to the mysterious mass in my 4 year old's hair.
The last time my bug guy came to call, my kiddos were on their way to vacation with Grandma. Hubby was at work - and I was blissfully alone, with SILENCE! AHHH! That ended thanks to the doorbell ringing and my ferocious two dogs - okay, they aren't actually ferocious, they just think they are. Once the pest thing was taken care of, I was free to sit down, have a glass of wine, watch my favorite show, and relax in peace and quiet. But who are we kidding here - I'm a mom - I had the opportunity to clean without small people around making new messes where I had just cleaned up old messes! With the addition of the crawl space cribbles everywhere, I had to vacuum. HAD to!
And as I am vacuuming, I notice, under my TV cabinet, a small pile of brown fur. It wasn't moving, so I decided to take a closer look. Upon further inspection, it appeared to be brown hair - and this is weird b/c no one has brown hair in my family. I thought Barbie had succumbed to an ill fate or was perhaps sporting a new do depending on who had gotten to her - the dogs or the 4 yr old.
Fast forward to yesterday, when we arrived at the vacation spot, I was informed, that my 4 yr old's curly and tangly hair had balled up to new proportions. Grandma was thinking of cutting it, but I'm a pro and reassured her that I would take care of it. It was the little one's bed time though, and she was in no shape for a comb out. We agreed to tackle it this morning. Thankfully I did not look at said mass prior to bed. It would have haunted me for sure!
WELL - this was NOT her usual mass of tangles. This was 3 inches wide by about 4 inches long and a good 3/4" thick or so with no start or end point that I could see. It was somewhere between a rat's nest, a dread lock, and a small-woodland-creature-may-be-encased-in-there kind of problem. Maybe I should coin a new term - the rat lock.
An hour later, I was still making my way towards the bulk of the rat lock in my 4 yr old's hair. I started to notice that parts of her hair, around her hairline - especially around her face - were noticeably shorter than 48 hours ago. As I am making my way through the nest, I notice that other pieces seem to be at odd lengths as well. Then, 70% of the nest suddenly came out in my hand. The more I combed, the more came out! By this time I am covered in her hair, a wad of it is balled up next to me, and she is laying on the couch whining about how LONG it is taking me.
Apparently, while her hair was up in a pony tail, and a few wayward strands came loose from their band, she decided to take matters into her own hands or rather scissors - and CUT her hair. Only she cut her hair both at home (the ball of fur under the TV stand) and here on vacation. There's one big problem though - she's 4, and has the fine motor skills and accuracy of a 4 year old, so she appeared to have just kept hacking away at it until she was satisfied. Since her hair was up in a pony tail at the time of the trim, many of the now cut strands were secure in the rubber band yet mobile at both ends and free to wrap themselves up around the hair that was left creating the mysterious nest in my 4 yr old's hair!
90 minutes of tenuous combing later, and she looks - well, like a mess.
I haven't figured out how to fix her hair yet, but I do know to hide all of the scissors now.
Oh boy! My good friend's daughter gave herself a mullet right before her wedding, so she had to have a short bob to be the flower girl. It came out cute, though!
ReplyDeleteWhat a story--hilarious! Good luck with the rodents. It's great you are recording these stories for your kids to treasure someday!
ReplyDeleteWow! What a crazy day. Best of luck with all your pests.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to a curly haired mess (my almost 3 year old daughter--her bday is tomorrow). I will definitely make sure to hide all scissors.
Now I do have a question from reading this post. I know it is such a small detail in this crazy story, but I'm curious. Christmas tree skirt? How long ago did Abby bring in "Ratatouille"? Keep in mind I ask this while watching Christmas in July on QVC. Like I said, you just have me curious =)
@Dianna - on my - I cannot imagine!
ReplyDelete@Carrie - thank you
@Jen - well, I hate to admit this, but our Christmas decorations were up until March-ish. I had a shoulder dislocation last year plus surgery. It really flared my shoulder up to put the decorations up, so it took me a while to take them down - she says feeling embarrassed for having them up so long! hehe And Happy Birthday to your daughter! Definitely hide the scissors!!