Live free or die

"I'm in no hurry,
And I don't know why,
I don't know why anymore."

-- Cum On Feel the Noize, Quiet Riot



I almost forgot about the other gnawing issue from this morning...

Before Joe jumped in the shower (something he has the luxury to fit in every day), he asked me for a check for $150. For the critter people.

Even though I worked hard to scrape up some meager savings so that I could subsist while I was on maternity leave, it didn't piss me off at all that he asked me for money, but that the critter people were going to steal $150 from us!!

We have heard rodents in the walls for a few months now. Joe called the association that rules over the townhomes and they delightfully informed him that it wasn't their problem. We have four other units connected to us in one way or another, and we are not the only ones with this problem. Our neighbors on either side have both mentioned finding mice in their basements, and we have found one in our basement and one in the driveway.

Though the rumble in the walls can be annoying at times -- excessively so when I'm lying to Zoe at bedtime about the party going on in her closet -- they are not exactly running all over my dining room table or pooping in my cabinets. If I had my way, and the time, I would drill holes in the walls and bait and rescue them and nurse them to health and place them in loving homes. But, alas, I have my hands full, and I just want them out. So Joe called the critter people. Who were going to charge us $150 to "scan" the whole width of our 25-foot-wide townhome. Front and back. Outside. Where the house meets the grass. And then tell us how much they were going to charge us for actually doing something. Like putting out poison. Because we are not capable of figuring out such ingenious solutions on our own.

Joe apparently saw nothing wrong with this. He said, "They'll put out poison that won't hurt dogs if you have them." We don't have them.

I can see, say, giving a mechanic a fee for an estimate... he actually has skills (and technology) that a normal human being doesn't possess. But giving a critter killer $150 for taking a drive out to our house?? And unless we convinced our string of four connected neighbors to also treat the common walls, we'd surely fail at getting rid of the ruckus.

It wasn't difficult to convince Joe this was a bad idea as I paced the bedroom floor flailing my arms and ranting like a lunatic. He looked overly concerned and offered to call the place back and cancel, but I was torn because they were actually out on the icy, snowy streets, on their way to our little abode at that moment, braving the weather to squeeze money out of another fool. I mean, the more I thought about it, I realized the genius behind their money-making scheme and was disappointed that I haven't yet thought up my own little rip-off racket to make myself rich.


Luckily, they called to say they couldn't make it up the hill with all the snow.

The mice will live to see another spring. Assuming they stay in the walls and out of my cabinets.