06.06.08

so the other big news in these parts (after, you know, the eating of breakfast) is the constant expiration of little creatures. ever heard the drowning pool song "bodies (let the bodies hit the floor)" (featured prominently in previews for stop-loss, that ryan phillippe iraq movie)? joe has a friend who was having sex when his CD changer switched from booty music over to that track; it's possibly the best never-to-be-heard-in-the-sack song ever,* and we dissolve into giggles whenever we hear it. anyway, it's become the little three-legged cat's song, as he's destroyed at least five mice in the last two weeks. i should never have joked about my domesticated cats' crappy hunting abilities re: the mouse they groomed to death a few months ago: i had to pry a live and tragically suffering one** from jude's jaws two weeks ago. another, fatally head-chomped, used its final moments to crawl near the base of a heavy swivel chair (and get swept beneath it in our initial corpse search), and we spent a week and a half gagging and buying up every nastily-scented odor-killer duane reade would sell us (we thought the body was unreachable under the floorboards). the one we found yesterday morning? internets, don't let your cats watch the end of braveheart.

the mice are coming from a hole in the floor under the radiator. our super knows this and claims he will come by to plug the hole. the three-legged cat knows this and has stopped sleeping on my pillow so that he can guard The Mouse Chute; he parks three feet in front of it and sniffs creepily, like a ringwraith. as i will not use poison, traps, or those horrible glue panels while the hole is open, this is his time to shine; given how many cat activities he's automatically denied, being tailless and three-legged, maybe i should be glad he's found a hobby. no, i'm ready for mausfest to be over.


imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 other contenders for Worst Sack Song?

02 speaking of heavy metal, have you yet had the pleasure of reading enter sandman: the children's book?

03 do you think one of those sonic gopherbusters would keep mice from leaping into my gimpy cat's mouth?

04 why do air fresheners, scented candles, and "odor neutralizers" smell so terrible?


*though i concede, as others have noted, that fogerty's "centerfield" is strong competition.

**i am so, so glad the poor thing died on the fire escape a minute after i placed it there to stall for time. i am in no way equipped to mercy-kill; when i was a kid and my pet mouse was dying of cancer, i made my mother take her to the vet to be euthanized.

9 comments:

babyjo said...

are you sure mom actually took her to the vet?

no hate on jeanne, i'm just wondering if that's a practical parenting move. i would have lied.

lauren said...

she complained for years about spending $20 on a shot for a $6 mouse - if that was supplementary fibbing, it was very well done. then again, i am the most gullible person on earth, so...who knows?

this would be much simpler if i could remember the trip itself (i would have gone along, right?). why gullible and forgetful, genetics? AND huge feet? seriously.

lauren said...

speaking of...whatever happened to my turtle, dude? i did NOT see craig the last time we visited you in LA.

krystal said...

about sex and the city, totally avoiding that one also, although apparently the overriding message of the movie is that friendship outlasts everything else. this, sending a very different message than most hollywood flicks which convey most women stabbing each other in the back over some ding dong or another. and, i love that it blew away box office standards-in some weird way. but, i have yet to see it, and i'm not champing at the bid either.....i do like lane's description of them being "banded together, like hormonal hobbits...".

babyjo said...

your turtle and my turtle are swimming around in a pond in the valley....as they started smelling like ass almost immediately after a tank cleaning, i had to give them away. i believe they are much happier now.

plus, they probably now have ample room to get it on, so hooray baby turtles! craig's a chick, banky's a dude. so it goes.

tangodeltagolf said...

At least your little three-legged serial killer finishes the job. Our kitty, Noah, has the most delightful habit of bringing vermin in and often not finishing them off, and every now and then allowing them to slip away from her into a closet or something. In the Bay Area, it was mice, that Laura had to methodically trap one by one. Over the last few months in LA, as the weather warms up, the latest little friends she's brought over have been cockroaches! You expect the cat to solve vermin problems, not create them!

01 A lot of contenders for worst, but off the top of my head, Courtney Love's voice, even in non-horizontal activities, generally makes my skin crawl.

02 Pretty funny, though I think Lars ought to be ordered to keep 100 feet from children at all times.

03 I kind of doubt the gopherbuster would work in an apartment. Those things are supposed to go in the ground and propagate their signal via the earth (the speed of sound through the ground probably has an impact on their performance). Also, keep in mind that those things rely on ultrasound, which other animals (dogs for sure, I'm not sure about cats) are sensitive too as well. I don't know if you have other animals (dogs) in your building, but add in using one in an enclosed space rather than outdoors, and it might lead to unpredictable and possibly negative results with your or your neighbor's pets. That's just out of the hip pocket, though. Feel free to ask someone more knowledgeable.

04 How else are they supposed to neutralize the odor? You got one bad-ass stink, you need to find a badder-ass one to smack it down and call it Debbie.

valya said...

04 i second your observation, and if i could find one that didn't stink nearly worse than the primarily offending odor, the diaper champ might actually be worthy of its title.

Ma said...

It was $27 to put a $3 mouse down...and, yes, I did in fact deliver into the hands of your favorite vet, though I cannot vouch for its fate once she left the room. The story gets me mega points in the eyes of other parents when trying to play one-upsmanship regarding unbelievable things we did for our children.
And although Beans was not known for catching and/or dispensing with varmints, let us not forget that he regularly sexually abused stuffed animals smaller than himself, dragging them to his favorite spot at the bottom of the stairs.

baby jo said...

excuse me, but my stuffed cow was NOT smaller than beans, and she took more sexual abuse than any other plush toy.