Dear Blog Reader
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine; sitting in
my warm living room enjoying the sight of a light six inch dusting of snow. It
is nice to see that the weather people can change world views in just a few
short weather fronts. In the old days of late December, they would have posted
winter storm warnings for six inches of snow. We would have experienced a run
on the dairy counter in the grocery store. It is fortunate that we have
adjusted. Bessy the cow still has not recovered from the last run two weeks
ago.
I can just hear her in her best Scottish brogue. “I can’t do
it farmer Kirk!
“Damn it Bessy. You have to do it. The people won’t be able
to make their French toast while stuck at home with one another waiting for the
snow emergency to lift. They may be forced to eat their young.”
“You don’t understand farmer. You can’t expect me to drink
any more water and eat any more hay and then magically turn it all into milk!
It can’t be done!”
“Damn it cow. Try!”
We have adjusted and things are returning to a deep winter
rhythm. Just in time, in 3 weeks, during a thaw, it will be time for the
orchardist to wander up and down the fruit trees, pruners in hand, making room
for this year’s crop. The horticulturist will wander out to the green house,
digging out the soil mix, dusting off the heating pads, and starting pansies,
begonias and setting Easter Lilies. Don’t worry; we are going to make a
comeback. This current condition won’t last forever. We just need to stay
vigilant for the signs and rejoice as they are seen.
While waiting for the signs of spring, the lovely Miss
Beverly and I have been seeing other signs; signs that are not as pleasing to
the soul; signs that give us pause and cause a
shudder to run down our spines. It appears that the Arctic Vortex
swirling around the Midwest has created a
vacuum of sorts. Not only is it sucking the heat from our houses, our bones and
our very souls, it appears to be sucking mice into our houses. This phenomenon
has been harder on the lovely Miss Beverly. Her years of indoctrination as a
young child left her with voices in her head that said “Well of course your
housekeeping in subpar, you have mice in the house.”
Thankfully, I listened to my 7th grade science
teacher. Mr. Clifford was explaining how scientific thought evolved through out
the ages. He explained that the alchemists observing some of the facts would
make leaps of logic to explain the rest of the facts that they had not
observed. Mr. Clifford went on to give the following example. Scientists would
leave a small amount of grain on a shelf with some rags. They would do this in
a mouse free castle laboratory. They would watch the rags and no mice would
approach this. They would vigilantly watch said grain and rag pile and viola a
couple of weeks later after they were tired of their stupid experiment, they
would clean up the rags and grain and find that a mouse had indeed
spontaneously generated and be living happily in the new nest they had created.
Unfortunately for the mice, the scientists had been commissioned by the king to
test the allergenic affects of mascara that the queen was thinking of using. So
the mice became lab rats and the rest is history so to speak.
The whole misunderstanding could have been cleared up if the
early alchemists had focused on optics, film and motion centers instead of the
biological sciences. Today, any alchemist worth his salt could go to Amazon and
order a motion-sensor activated wildlife camera. He would be able to observe
that as the Arctic Vortex sucked the heat from our homes, bones, and souls;
mice were being sucked into the heat escaping vacuum. Of course to observe heat
being sucked from our souls, the alchemist would have to get the mass
spectr-al-ometer motion-sensor activated game camera.)
Anywho, we have mice. They are vegetarian mice. They appear
to love those little sweet peppers that you buy in the big 15 gallon bags from
Costco. They taste like candy. They are so sweet and colorful. They help make
any winter salad a colorful diversion from the desultory landscapes we see
outside our windows in late January. Well some of these wonderful peppers went
bad in the fridge. Yes, they are good and good for you, but there were 15
gallons of them and there is still pie, chocolate fudge, and ice cream to eat. One
must eat a balanced diet; besides eating only vegetables can be unhealthy as
this little story will show in a few minutes as it unfolds.
So, the peppers ended up in the compost bucket on the
kitchen counter. This is where the vegetarian, closet eating, mice found them. They
were such gluttons. Yet, so filled with self loathing, they dragged these colorful,
midwinter delicacies over behind the dish drainer and behind the sugar and flour
cans and had a feast. It was sad when we found the remains. You could sense
that they could not help themselves. There
were 5 or 6 skeletal remains of the peppers in each place. One wasn’t enough. Their
gluttonous little appetites took them back to the compost pile over and over. They
would pick out the next tasty morsel and drag it back to their closeted space
where they would try to hide their guilt in the dark, secret place.
You have seen my hints for mouse capture in these pages
before. In the past, I have relied on JIFF peanut butter for prior trap baits. In
the past, the organic stuff was unappealing for the four legged intruders of
the Sharritt house. I think that we had a group of mice who went for the
sweets. In that case, JIFF was the appropriate brand to use. Obviously,
vegetarian mice need a different tact. I pulled out the organic peanut butter
and their fates were sealed. See! Healthy eating isn’t all that its cracked up
to be.
I am on the hunt; fulfilling one of the designated manly
functions. Two of my adversaries are down; some more are to go. Each day, I
take the nightly harvest out and stack up the little brown eyed druids in the
snow. This too will become a sign of spring. The Arctic Vortex will stop
sucking. It will stop vacuuming mice into the house. I will stop using the
wretched little mice’s self-loathing weaknesses against them. The sun will
shine and spring will come. It’s science.
Take care,
Roger
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