Critters, Varmints and other Irritants

When the wonders of spring get to be to much. True story.

Critters, Varmints and other Irritants

Written by T. L. O’Neal

 

     You know I really like spring. It’s when the earth awakes from it’s winter nap and let’s out a big yawn and says, “It’s time to get busy again.” There’s always so much going on that it’s hard to take it all in sometimes. You have the flowers blooming, the birds laying their eggs and raising their young and everything else going on… but this year spring was a little bit different.

 

     I always loved to watch the birds in the morning with my coffee while they would come in and eat at the feeders. I have them hanging up under the awning in the living room window. It’s always rather relaxing to watch them as they eat and to listen to them sing; it’s very therapeutic. I had feeders at my house and Mama always had them at hers too. Before Mama passed in the hospital, she asked me to feed her birds and look after her cat, which I’ve always done ever since. Now that I’m living in her house I watch them there as they come in during the day to eat and to play in the birdbath too.

 

   There’s also a squirrel that comes around and eats off the ground and I always enjoyed watching him too… until this year. This year he brought his girlfriend; I guess that’s who she is. I’m not really sure on what her affiliation is to him because I never did ask what it was. Anyway, he brought this scraggly looking squirrel with him and all my serenity of watching “my” birds was gone just like that. She might have been scraggly but she was pretty damn smart… for a squirrel that is and for some people too I guess.

 

     That damn squirrel found a way to get up under the awning and hang from her hind legs while eating out of those feeders. That wasn’t the only thing hanging either; her tits were hanging to her knees. Great I thought, now I can’t get rid of her with her having babies to feed and my tranquility was gone too. It was gone as fast as if a vanload of in-laws moving in and that’s pretty doggone fast. Damn squirrel! She didn’t just eat either, oh no, that tree-rat had to scare all of my birds off, not to mention tear-up the feeders too.

 

    Nothing ever seemed to run her off, not banging on the window or even Rusty the cat. Judi hissed and put out her claws at that squirrel through the window like a cat would and that got it moving…for a little while. Why Rusty didn’t do that is beyond me, I guess he didn’t think about it or just didn’t care that much. Miss Callie the other cat wasn’t of much use either; she sat on the front porch and just watched them play and tear up my feeders. I guess watching squirrels is just a spectator sport to cats. Anyway, My nerves were starting to go bad with all of this; hell my eye even started to twitch. Damn squirrel! We tried to feed them popcorn, bread and other things instead of birdfeed, but all of that was to no avail. She just wanted birdseed for some reason or other and just kept coming to the bird feeders. Damn, damn squirrel!

 

   As if that wasn’t enough, the other day Judi found a five-foot long chicken snake under the feeders. For those of you who don’t know what a chicken snake is, it’s a regional name for a black rat snake. I guess they got that name because they’re notorious for eating chicken eggs and bird eggs, but I never have seen one eat a rat though. Anyways, she called me outside and I tried to catch it and that damn thing struck at me several times and then went up under the house through a vent. About thirty minutes later she called me again and said there was one in the bedroom window. It was starting to look like we had a snake epidemic on our hands. She went to open it up and there was one stuck up in the top of the window. He must have been there all night because when she let down the window the night before, the window was sticking. It must have wedged him in there then; that’s what it looked like anyways.

 

     I managed to catch him by holding him behind his head, and hauled his butt off to the next county. It was a bit difficult driving a four speed holding that snake out of the window. Plus he was wrapped around my arm as tight as he could go too; I guess he had to… I was going 65 miles an hour. I dumped him in a ditch at the county line and said see you later and good riddance to that blame snake. Well, I went back home and about two hours later she found another one in the window; the same window mind you. I thought she was joking around, but she wasn’t. This one was in between the screen and the glass at the bottom, so the only way to get him out was to open the window from the inside. I wasn’t sure what was about that one window but it sure did seem to be a snake magnet for some reason or other. Anyhow, this one was going to be a little bit harder to remove I thought, so I got this brilliant idea to use some starting fluid, which is just ether in a spray can.

 

  Those that remember biology class know that ether is what you use to knockout critters before you experiment on them. Anyway, I shot that ether through the screen doing the best I could to knockout that poor snake. Well, with it being a screen, the majority of it came back out onto me. I could tell it was working pretty good… on me that is, and I guess it was on him too. All you could smell was ether; it was in a pure fog. He started to slow down a bit and when he tried to climb up, he just managed to wave back and forth a little like an unenthusiastic kid waving a flag at a parade.

 

   While all this was going on, Judi came out to see how it was going… with a lit cigarette too. If you didn’t already know, ether is highly flammable and combustible too. I told her to get away from there with it or we wouldn’t have to worry about the snake in the window, because there wouldn’t be a snake or even a window left. After that, the snake and I were doped up really good and so was Judi, so I went into the house to try to get him out through the window. I did put some gloves on in case he tried to bite me though. But under his condition I didn’t believe he was going to and under mine, I didn’t think I would much of cared. About that time, here comes Judi with another cigarette again. All you can smell at this point is ether throughout the whole house, so I asked her to put that one out too; otherwise we wouldn’t even have a house. After that round I opened the window and picked up the snake without a bit of a problem. The poor thing was wasted and probably would have a hangover from hell in the morning. I wasn’t feeling any pain either I might add.

 

Then Judi said,” Wow, that’s a big one.” She was talking about the snake by the way.

 

Which I replied, “That’s what she said.” It was the ether talking of course, so for a little while every time she said something after that, I would say, “That’s what she said.”

 

Hey, at the time it seemed funny… to me anyways. Ether makes everything seem funny, hell it was probably a hoot to the snake too. It’s a running joke at the house now; it sure makes me feel good when she says that though.

 

     So it was off to the next county over again, but this time the snake wasn’t wrapped around my arm. This time its mouth was gagged open with its tongue hanging out and its body fluttering in the wind like a sheet. I could relate to the poor thing and having “Jethro Tull” cranked up on the truck’s stereo probably just added to the snake’s experience… it sure did mine. When I got to the county line I threw him where I tossed the other one; this time it just laid on his back and that was the way I left him. He’ll have a powerful headache in the morning I thought and I probably should of given him a BC powder before dumping him out. That would have been the nice thing to do I suspect. When I got back to the house the room was still fogged up with the ether, so we had to put a fan in the window to pull it all out of the house. After that I needed a BC too, that s**t does give you one hell of a headache.

   

   About a week later something wasn’t right with one of the flowerbeds. Judi’s thing is the flowerbeds; I guess you can say they’re her hobby. I plant them and then leave them to their own devices for the most part but she really loves them. Anyway, last year I planted some caladiums and they hadn’t come up this year yet; the hostas were up and everything else for that matter. So she went digging around under the mulch to see what was wrong with them and wouldn’t you just know it, hundreds and hundreds of slugs everywhere. They were in a pure work, in groups the size of baseballs too. I hate slugs; they’re like the poor relations of snails with a sinus problem, that’s how I look at them anyhow. Gee, they were some nasty critters and the caladiums were gone; those slugs had eaten every last one of them. You just can’t have a damn thing I thought. Mama, always said, “If you want to have anything nice, don’t have kids or animals.”  She was right too, that’s why she waited till we were all grown before she bought any new furniture.

 

   Well we went to work getting rid of those slugs, putting all the mulch in a wheelbarrow and then digging up the slugs with our hands. I salted them down and the mulch too for good measure as we went along, and I did get some satisfaction as I saw those slugs dry up to nothing from all that salt. “Take that you b******s!” I thought. But you know, slug slime is almost impossible to wash off of your hands; it’s worse than glue. We got them all cleaned out hopefully, and Judi planted the new caladiums that I bought so maybe that will be it for the slugs.

  

     It wasn’t long after that when one evening Judi was out watering the flowerbeds. She does it every evening, especially since we have been in a drought. Anyways, she was out there watering away when one of the lilies starting jumping up and down. I’m sure it was happy to get some water but not happy enough to do that. She grabbed it and it pulled it right up and it was cut off about eight inches below the ground. Well, she called me out there and I said it was probably a mole; it was just too dry and those critters were so deep in the ground that a trap just wouldn’t work. So Judi tried to flood him out; she pumped water in that hole for the longest time but it never did backup. She didn’t get that mole either, because everyday another lily fell victim to that pest. When that mole started in on some of the flowers that my Mama planted, the situation got serious. So I started to dig for that mole and I was going to dig up the whole flowerbed to get him if I had to. It didn’t matter if I had to dig to China either; I was going to get that sucker. I was on a mission to get that mole but Judi stopped me, she couldn’t bear for me to ruin the whole flowerbed. But to think about it in a positive way; we did have a lot of cut flowers for the house but this was just getting to be a bit too much for the both of us. Those flowers mean everything to her and now she’s getting stressed out along with me. Judi thought that Miss Callie caught and killed that pesky mole but it turned out to be just a shrew. The hunt is still on I guess but after all of this we needed to relax a bit.

 

   So we would like to sit out on the front porch in the evenings in our shorts, especially when it’s been hot and after the sun has gone down to relax a little. We would listen to the frogs and crickets and whatever other creatures that were stirring out at night. We really enjoyed watching for the fireflies but what we couldn’t stand were those pesky mosquitoes. So we got some of those citronella candles to help with that, and help they did… attract more mosquitoes that is. They smelled nice and the warm glow of them made the porch feel cozy but the light just seemed to attract those little pests even more. We could of got a zapper I suppose but it does kind of defeat the purpose of wanting to listen to the crickets and frogs, when all you can hear is “ZAP! ZAP!” and smell bugs frying. Of course that smell might work better as a deterrent than citronella to ward off the little bloodsuckers. So we sat there listening to nature, slapping the bloodsucking part of nature, scratching the effects of nature and not having too much relaxing fun at all.

 

   When all of a sudden I felt something in my underwear and no it wasn’t Judi’s hand, although that would of made the evening better. It was a large beetle bug, nestled right down there in the old bush. Now, I have no idea on how he got in there through a pair of boxer briefs but he must have had a map because I have a hard enough time getting in them myself. But that was it for me; romantic, relaxing or not, I wasn’t going to sit there and be a meal or a training ground for every damn bug out there. I guess in this case a bug in the hand is defiantly worth more than one in the bush, and a hell of a lot more comfortable too.

 

   As it stands now, if I feed the birds that damn squirrel still comes back. But this time she brought her babies too, so now we have five damn squirrels to deal with. Not to mention another adult one too, must be an aunt or uncle squirrel or something, it’s just a regular family affair. We also haven’t caught the mole and it’s still destroying the flowerbed, one flower at a time. The mosquitoes and the heat are just getting worse and the pollen is killing my sinuses, so I’m stuck inside even more now. You know what, I hate spring and I’m just waiting for winter to get here again for life can get back to normal for a change.     

 

 

Reviews

[Debra Stevens Edwards (..]

As always you have a way of telling a story that is humorous and such fun to read. This is no exception. great fun to read. The way you tend to turn it into a war with nature and always end up
losing in the end. Funny Stuff.
Debby

[H. A. M.]

wave back and worth ,Forth?
I feel for you out there but you're gonna have to kill something. Funny read. The snakes where my favorite. I wasn't sure who Judi was at first until further down and saw she's smoking. I thought she might have been an animal. The bug in the bush. No man. Just plain no. I live in the city and that would have definitly given me a heart attack. This is too much nature for me. But kudos to you for writing some entertaining work.

[Wulfstan Crumble]

Am really glad to see a new piece of yours on here and will come back tomorrow when i have much more spare time to give it a really good in depth review. Dont let me forget.

[A. Dade]

Hahahahaha! God... "The old bush"... now that's hilarious. You have a very matter of fact way of writing and it's a very captivating style of writing, keeps the reader moving right along...


and for the record -- i would never touch a wild snake in any way.... Screw that, I'd call animal control. hah!

[Pamela]

This should come with a health warning. 'Beware, reading this will render you blind and incompetant (and possibly incontenant), your sides will ache, your head will swim and you will find yourself hunting for the f**s you gave up three weeks ago.'

I don't know how you do it but this is the funniest yet. I can not review it sensibly because it is so mad. Anyway, you know how I love your work. I have to put this on my 'Love' list. No-one should miss it. Please hurry up and publish that book 'cos I want to see your stories in print so much. I wonder who would do the illustrations. I'm sure artists would be clammering for the job once they had read you work.

Please don't run out of ideas or family history.

[Taja B.]

Hahaha This story is very funny! Lol... It's very well written, humorous,action packed and entertaining from beginning to end.

Great job. I really enjoyed this!:)

[Otto L.n. Pipgras]

haha...some funny play on old adages and sayings. I've had the same slug problem with my caladiums too. Why they leave the elephant ears alone is kind of strange...maybe there's something in the leaves they don't like, and something in the caladium leaf which they do. they make slug killer but I've always used my mothers home remedy...put a mason jar or two in the garden half filled with beer. They'll be drawn to it and drown, drunk in the jar.

Sounds like you've got quite a handful of trouble there....Ain't nature wonderful? =oP

enjoyed the story.

[Silvia - Scribo, Ergo S..]

Haven�t laughed so hard about a story I read in a long time! So thoroughly enjoyable ... and I know exactly how you feel! Not only do I volunatrily live with 6 horses, 4 dogs and 3 cats (who have - between them - housetrained me to the T!), safe for the snakes I have all the other critters to deal with as well ... and it�s quite enough to keep repairing collateral damage from canine "winter garedening" after every winter! .... Fabulous read!

[An Ordinary Woman]

LOL This was cute. I enjoyed the read but gotta tell you that even the mention of slugs makes my skin crawl. lol

I DETEST those things. I actually have nightmares about slugs, thats how bad it is. The pic is adorable even though it is a naughty squirrel for giving you so much trouble.

I really enjoyed this, started my day off with a smile .... thanks for sharing it !
~ here's to a good weekend ....

[Gary H]

Brilliant work. Really enjoyed this and strangely found a lot of British type humour in it especially -
'Then Judi said,� Wow, that�s a big one.� She was talking about the snake by the way.
Which I replied, �That�s what she said.� It was the ether talking of course, so for a little while every time she said something after that, I would say, �That�s what she said.� '

Everything fitted together really well and proves, once again, what an entertaining storyteller you are.
I wish I could write like you - don't worry, I'm not going to try again!