Adaptation to COVID world

Now it can be told. I opened my garage one sunny morning a few years ago and was surprised to see a rat scuttle out. He dashed around the back and clambered into an underground pipe for gutter drainage. After cementing that pipe shut, and cleaning the food he'd stashed in the garage, I called the township. The nice lady confirmed an unfortunate case of garbage hoarding in a house on the next block, which led to a neighborhood infestation of rodents. (They were fearless: I observed a couple of the furry vermin sitting on the front stoop in broad daylight, eating lunch.) The town wouldn't (and, turns out, legally couldn't) do anything about it. A summons for not cutting the grass, yes, but rats - sorry.

A little investigating revealed the husband living in said house had done hard time for embezzling from a local college on behalf of the mob. The feds had turned up evidence in the trash. While hubby was in stir, Mother had a paranoid breakdown, and stopped putting the trash out. FOR YEARS. Even after hubby was released, they still hoarded trash. (There was a yellow Volvo station wagon in the driveway filled to the brim with all manner of crap, from rocks to cuckoo clocks.) Finally, a neighbor with connections got the state animal welfare office to check on the dog, the hoarding was discovered, and it was soon au revoir to the rats. It took several weeks filling a truck-sized dumpster to clean out the Rat House, where the state had gone so far as to rip out the walls to find the extent of the hoarding. Mother eventually died, the house was sold, renovated, and earlier this year was sold again, for more than $900k!

Here's your boffo twist in the story: Before they moved, it turned out the Rat House couple also had a house down the Jersey shore. They were cited there for animal abuse, because the house was overrun by -- you guessed it! -- cats.

 

Even money Fucko is hoarding feral pigs in the White House.

 

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

 

Decades ago, we had one show up inside a toilet bowl. It wasn't very big, just swimming laps as it tried to get out. I put a heavy stack of books on the toilet lid and then called a plumber. He said that it likely got onto our roof, then went down an exhaust pipe which wasn't capped. After some Googling, I lifted the lid just enough to squirt in a bunch of liquid dishwashing detergent and flushed. The rat was gone. Then I went to the hardware store, bought caps for all the vents, got on the roof and installed them.

 

More than half the people in that picture are no longer with the administration. Only the best.

 

We had an owl fly down a chimney once. That was fun getting him out of the house. We got him settled into a dark room. I went and got an old burlap sack and my welding gloves. On the count of three, I had someone flip on the lights to blind him long enough to throw the sack over him and rush him to the door.
The next morning I fastened an old grill grate over the chimney.

 

These are the only critter problems I've had.

 

My cousin a pet raccoon once. He ultimately had to get rid of him when he got older. It wasn't that the thing got mean, but when it was full grown, it still thought it was tiny and became a problem jumping on people's heads, etc.

 

We set up a trap, and one night we heard some rattling. BOTH raccoons managed to get themselves locked in the trap. Wife insisted we drive 30 miles to the nearest state park and release them, because the place that supplied the trap would have euthanized them.

 

This Parody of a Holiday Classic "Baby, It's Covid Outside" Is What You Need To Laugh Today {WATCH}

 

Damn bad memories; somehow a family of raccoons started living under our house (perimeter foundation) and we could hear them every night so hired a “humane” catcher. Trap set, it was get this $100 per head. Every day I woke to look to see if another one got caught. 12 heads = $1200. That’s was I think about every time I see a damn raccoon.