I’m a nature lover. I understand how all creatures exist to create equilibrium and most is good. But there are a few things I don’t like, a couple of examples would be fleas and ticks, parasitic nuisances that taunt my fur kids, but I know they have a place in the food chain and fill a biological niche so I just have to deal with it.
Unfortunately I spend a lot of time picking over four pups when the ticks are running rampant or if a flea infestation occurs. Both of these crawlies are in the grass so it’s unavoidable unless you can teach the pups to use the porcelain throne and flusher.
Ticks have been rather harsh this fall, and it seems every time my pups go outside for a pee I’m picking off invaders. Henri is a cream boy so you can usually see where they’ve hopped on his legs or ears and get them before they settle in. The same for Apricot Honey and Red Fiz, but poor Jake is as black as coal so a visual check is difficult. Then I've discovered the odd flea, even harder to detect but such is life, it’s our lot and I don’t mind putting the health and welfare or my little family first, even when I lose sleep because of it. Why do I lose sleep you ask? If I find a flea on one of my babies at bedtime I will stay up until the elusive bastard is dead! I can't curl up all snug in my bed knowing something is crawling around and biting one of my babies!
I feel the same about our home. I don’t appreciate or want creatures crawling around my house either, acting as if they own the joint. Unless they contribute to the mortgage these unwanted pests need to respect boundaries. At 5:00 AM the other morning I heard a heavy footed mouse walk across my bedroom floor, went under the bed and disappeared under the baseboard molding, squeezing itself as flat as a pancake to make it through the crack. In my half dazed state, I thought Fiz had gotten out of bed and was walking around, her nails clickity clacking along the floorboards. I looked over the side of the bed and seeing nothing, I called out to her. She didn’t come. That’s when the light bulb blinded me to the creepy truth, what scurried under the bed was a mouse, and by the noise it made, a rather large one.
Then I hear the critter scratching through the wall as it headed to wherever it hangs during the daylight hours. Honey, a keen mouser now fully awake heard it too and was immediately up and looking over the side of the bed, ears perked. Now I know why she spends so much time hanging in that area sniffing and obsessing.
I don’t like killing the small creatures of the earth. I find it difficult to dispose of an animal just because it’s in search of a meal. I always think, ”Imagine how I would feel if a giant squashed me like a bug; my body exploding under the pressure of a large digit”. But now, they’ve crossed the line, leaving the basement and walls to infiltrate the inner sanctum of our life.
I say the mouse was heavy footed because it sounded big, like one of my dogs with nails scratching across the floor. I was a bit nervous as I swung my legs over the side of the bed in search of my slippers. Visions of a rat running up the inside of my pajama leg was a very detailed picture as I fumbled in the dark.
We had to kill a mouse a few weeks back that got into stored almonds in the pantry under the stairs, dragging away a pound of them into its basement den. He even stored some on the shelves, hidden in the vacuum cleaner hoses stored there, a stash for future reference. That close to our canned goods was upsetting but vindication for being anal about washing the tops of the tins before opening them. I read a story once in Reader’s Digest about mouse pee on a pop can that almost killed a man.
So we laid a trap and sure enough the next morning we found a rather large granddaddy of a mouse pinned under the metal bar. It made me sick and I thought of it for days, the buggy eyed death stare playing on my guilt. Although many are grossed out about mice, you can’t dispute their cuteness and it only wanted food to feed its family so I felt miserable for our actions. I thought of the killing for days and stopped hubby from reloading the trap to go for other family members. Plug up the hole I said, stop them from stealing in the first place.
But now I’m angry at the little buggers, crawling around inside my house in the still of night, probably leaving turds and toxic urine for my dogs to find. Crawling over our things, infiltrating our cupboards where we store our food. So it’s full on war now. Traps will be laid and the numbers will fall if they don’t keep to the basement because anything above the main floor is fair game.
Unfortunately I spend a lot of time picking over four pups when the ticks are running rampant or if a flea infestation occurs. Both of these crawlies are in the grass so it’s unavoidable unless you can teach the pups to use the porcelain throne and flusher.
Ticks have been rather harsh this fall, and it seems every time my pups go outside for a pee I’m picking off invaders. Henri is a cream boy so you can usually see where they’ve hopped on his legs or ears and get them before they settle in. The same for Apricot Honey and Red Fiz, but poor Jake is as black as coal so a visual check is difficult. Then I've discovered the odd flea, even harder to detect but such is life, it’s our lot and I don’t mind putting the health and welfare or my little family first, even when I lose sleep because of it. Why do I lose sleep you ask? If I find a flea on one of my babies at bedtime I will stay up until the elusive bastard is dead! I can't curl up all snug in my bed knowing something is crawling around and biting one of my babies!
I feel the same about our home. I don’t appreciate or want creatures crawling around my house either, acting as if they own the joint. Unless they contribute to the mortgage these unwanted pests need to respect boundaries. At 5:00 AM the other morning I heard a heavy footed mouse walk across my bedroom floor, went under the bed and disappeared under the baseboard molding, squeezing itself as flat as a pancake to make it through the crack. In my half dazed state, I thought Fiz had gotten out of bed and was walking around, her nails clickity clacking along the floorboards. I looked over the side of the bed and seeing nothing, I called out to her. She didn’t come. That’s when the light bulb blinded me to the creepy truth, what scurried under the bed was a mouse, and by the noise it made, a rather large one.
Then I hear the critter scratching through the wall as it headed to wherever it hangs during the daylight hours. Honey, a keen mouser now fully awake heard it too and was immediately up and looking over the side of the bed, ears perked. Now I know why she spends so much time hanging in that area sniffing and obsessing.
I don’t like killing the small creatures of the earth. I find it difficult to dispose of an animal just because it’s in search of a meal. I always think, ”Imagine how I would feel if a giant squashed me like a bug; my body exploding under the pressure of a large digit”. But now, they’ve crossed the line, leaving the basement and walls to infiltrate the inner sanctum of our life.
I say the mouse was heavy footed because it sounded big, like one of my dogs with nails scratching across the floor. I was a bit nervous as I swung my legs over the side of the bed in search of my slippers. Visions of a rat running up the inside of my pajama leg was a very detailed picture as I fumbled in the dark.
We had to kill a mouse a few weeks back that got into stored almonds in the pantry under the stairs, dragging away a pound of them into its basement den. He even stored some on the shelves, hidden in the vacuum cleaner hoses stored there, a stash for future reference. That close to our canned goods was upsetting but vindication for being anal about washing the tops of the tins before opening them. I read a story once in Reader’s Digest about mouse pee on a pop can that almost killed a man.
So we laid a trap and sure enough the next morning we found a rather large granddaddy of a mouse pinned under the metal bar. It made me sick and I thought of it for days, the buggy eyed death stare playing on my guilt. Although many are grossed out about mice, you can’t dispute their cuteness and it only wanted food to feed its family so I felt miserable for our actions. I thought of the killing for days and stopped hubby from reloading the trap to go for other family members. Plug up the hole I said, stop them from stealing in the first place.
But now I’m angry at the little buggers, crawling around inside my house in the still of night, probably leaving turds and toxic urine for my dogs to find. Crawling over our things, infiltrating our cupboards where we store our food. So it’s full on war now. Traps will be laid and the numbers will fall if they don’t keep to the basement because anything above the main floor is fair game.
There seems to be a large number of crawly things of late. Ticks are rampaging, looking for that last warm body before the cold temperatures send them underground. A friend had one on her face last evening after hugging her pup. I’ve been averaging three to four a day for a week. Having four pups ups the ante for their success. They are members of the spider family, have good eyes and lie in wait. Some of them are so small you can barely discern them from a speck of dirt.
An then there are fleas, not as ominous in that they don’t make your pets ill with limes, but it’s a parasite that multiplies quickly and will lay eggs that slide down the hairs of the dogs, dropping into the rugs, beds and any place they lie. One night last weekend we stayed up late watching Netflix and I was hooking. At 2:00 am before crawling into bed I checked the pups one last time and found a flea on Honey. Although I scraped across it with my fingernail, usually rendering it motionless until I can finish it off, Honey moved and the flea escaped into the surrounding underbrush of her fur. Knowing it was there I couldn’t in good conscience go to bed so we went downstairs under the Ott-lite and I checked every square inch of her for an hour and a half until I found the elusive little bastard. A flea moves quickly so it was always one step ahead of my nimble fingers but finally I found it and it will never bite again. I squished the blood sucking parasite between the nails of my thumbs then gave it a watery grave down the drain.
I can’t use chemicals on my guys. Anything that will kill a flea or tick on contact for up to 6 months repels me. No one can convince me that that kind of killing power on flesh doesn’t affect the animal. Understanding how absorbent the skin is, and how everything we put on our bodies from lipstick to shampoo ends up in the liver, it has to be in all the animal's body tissue and organs. I want my babies to enjoy optimal health and I want to be able to bury my nose in their warm bodies for snuggles and kisses without absorbing God knows what.
So back to the mice. Creatures scurrying around the house and under my bed is just wrong. I’ll let hubby do the dirty deed while I turn my head and try to put it out of my mind. Lie in bed at night waiting to hear the snap! I promise I won’t gross anyone out with the details but we will pursue our hunt until the walls are silent. No more scratching and clawing their way through our domain, keeping us awake and Honey on guard. Be warned Mickey, Minnie and clan, it’s time to find new digs so vamoose or succumb to traps at breakneck speed, pardon the pun......
An then there are fleas, not as ominous in that they don’t make your pets ill with limes, but it’s a parasite that multiplies quickly and will lay eggs that slide down the hairs of the dogs, dropping into the rugs, beds and any place they lie. One night last weekend we stayed up late watching Netflix and I was hooking. At 2:00 am before crawling into bed I checked the pups one last time and found a flea on Honey. Although I scraped across it with my fingernail, usually rendering it motionless until I can finish it off, Honey moved and the flea escaped into the surrounding underbrush of her fur. Knowing it was there I couldn’t in good conscience go to bed so we went downstairs under the Ott-lite and I checked every square inch of her for an hour and a half until I found the elusive little bastard. A flea moves quickly so it was always one step ahead of my nimble fingers but finally I found it and it will never bite again. I squished the blood sucking parasite between the nails of my thumbs then gave it a watery grave down the drain.
I can’t use chemicals on my guys. Anything that will kill a flea or tick on contact for up to 6 months repels me. No one can convince me that that kind of killing power on flesh doesn’t affect the animal. Understanding how absorbent the skin is, and how everything we put on our bodies from lipstick to shampoo ends up in the liver, it has to be in all the animal's body tissue and organs. I want my babies to enjoy optimal health and I want to be able to bury my nose in their warm bodies for snuggles and kisses without absorbing God knows what.
So back to the mice. Creatures scurrying around the house and under my bed is just wrong. I’ll let hubby do the dirty deed while I turn my head and try to put it out of my mind. Lie in bed at night waiting to hear the snap! I promise I won’t gross anyone out with the details but we will pursue our hunt until the walls are silent. No more scratching and clawing their way through our domain, keeping us awake and Honey on guard. Be warned Mickey, Minnie and clan, it’s time to find new digs so vamoose or succumb to traps at breakneck speed, pardon the pun......
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