doin' the rat-trap boogie.

you know those neat garden window seats that some people have - miss england, you probably have one - where you can sit in your house and watch birds and butterflies and maybe a squirrel or two, filling their little bellies from your carefully tended feeders and flowers? the kind that you migrate towards when you have had a stressful day and need some peace, or maybe early in the morning when everything is quiet and you reflect on what a joy life really is as you sip your tea?

yea, i don't have one of those. what *I* have is a window that (i USED to think was neat because there is this beautiful blue potato bush right outside it that is trimmed to create a type of awning along my sidewalk and that gives wonderful shade in the summer and is nature's umbrella in the winter.) looks out upon a previously undetected nest of carnage.

been having rat issues again - they really don't bother me (GASP!) for the most part. i hear them frolicking in the attic seemingly happy, going about their little rat lives, raising their little rat families. about 2 weeks ago, braden looked particularly tired so i asked how he slept. he informs me that once he finally let the sounds of the rats playing lull him to sleep, he slept like the dead. well, until they woke him up again at about 3am with what must have been a family reunion of some sort - like maybe a birthday party where EVERYone they had ever known showed up. real nice shawna, you freakin redneck. get rid of the fucking rats already.

i called my stripper/pest control man (true fact, and found only in the easy life) and told him i was having problems again. he came out yesterday and set about a bazillion traps in my attic and outside along my fence. his explanation for why i have them has always been because i have trees close to the house which they use as an overground railroad to gain access to my roof. (some of you may remember that i literally watched a rat scale the side of my house once, so i know the trees make their lives a little easier, but those fuckers pretty much go wherever the hell they want to.) his solution, cut back the trees. ok, haven't done that (went out one day to do it - true story - and found that about 18 billion bees had discovered my acacia tree was in full bloom...yea, didn't trim that day.) but i plan on doing it soon.

cut to last night. while i'm happily cleaning my crap room, my phone rings and it's my friend stacy next door telling me to look outside my window. i pull up the blinds and immediately see her ENTIRE family crowded in their window looking at me. weird, i know, but, for now, the easy life takes place in freakin' suburbia with the neighbors literally 10 feet away. so she called me to inform me of a visitor snacking on something in the tree between our houses. they are watching this big-ass rat eating, gnawing, whatever right outside my window. nice, huh? we watched him for a bit, oohing and awwing over how cute he was (*wink*) and then decided we'd scare him off. he ran straight up the tree to my roof and disappeared. few minutes later, another rat, same spot, ran onto my roof. wth?

i figured there was something nibbly and delicious in there and dammit i was gonna find out what it was. armed with a stick, a step stool and the eyes of the neighbor's watching over my head for any other rats, i started diggin' around in the plant to discover what appears to be the shell of a bullfrog - bullfrogs don't have shells you say? this one was pretty damn dead and leathery, actually barely distinguishable as a frog. i also found some feathers, about a pound of olive pits (tree very close by) and a buncha rat poop. this is apparently the banquet hall for the neighborhood rodents...and right outside my window even!

i'm happy to report that the traps have yielded several monstrously huge rats in the last week - in and out of my house. in fact, stripper boy is out there right now dancing around in his g-string happily collecting rat carcasses, whilst i sit and enjoy the quiet that is my house at this particular moment in time.

ah...the easy life