Recovering from pnuemonia. While they are doing terrible things to my stomach, the antibiotics are working. (I thought I was getting better on the 13th, but it was just a tease). What a hellish ride. Unfortunately both kids are now glassy eyed, fevered, coughing and dripping snot. I really hope they just develop colds and not pnuemonia too. Meeps is unsmiling, wholly pathetic, nursing non-stop, napping non-stop and cutting two more teeth.
I just made a tremendous revelation a few minutes ago, that Alexandra Fuller, author of one of my favourite books “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, An African Childhood”, has written more books. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me look into it (aka Google it) before today, but what matters is that there are two other books for me to get my hands on and my public library has them BOTH. I feel like a lotto winner and I figured I would share.
The other day it dawned on me that this winter I heard not one single mouse in the rafters over our bed. (Little ultra-annoying noises like mice in the walls or the cat chewing plastic, can wake me from a dead sleep). Well it turns out there are no mice in our house because they have infested our garden shed. In numbers beyond your imagination. Puppers (who is 4.4lbs, gets beaten up by our cats, whose kills to date include several crickets and a baby bird) actually managed to catch and kill one today (I was so proud). All of this means we have procured a bag full of terrible toxins from the local feed store and will be commencing Mouse Massacre 2009 as soon as possible. …And no, I’m not just going to clean out the shed and send hundreds mice into the next closest food source (my house), or catch them and drop them off ‘down a country road somewhere’ (so they infest a neighbours house or barn). As a rule we only catch and release fish. **
A little while ago Bob & I planted 150 to-be transplants for the garden. I put them in the oven temporarily as Scott hadn’t hung my grow lights yet. And on the first day of my Terrible Illness, as I was preheating the oven to 425′F to sear a piece of pork I noticed a Terrible Smell. Oh yeah. In all of my glory I fried all 150 of those to-be transplants. So I’m starting that again. Late yes, but around here May 24 as a last frost date is wishful thinking and we often wish that we started plants to go out mid June, so it’s just gonna be that this year.
Some pre-sickness pictures for you.
1. Bob taking aim with his wooden long gun.
2. Baby and Daddy
3. Bob showing off the seeds in the oven (days before I cooked them). In addition to the MagnaDoodle, our plastic toy allowance list has now been widened to include cap guns. (As you can see).
4. Playing with Bob on the floor while his sister naps.
**I did consider briefly catching and releasing them into TOWN to get back at everyone else who drops their unwanted cats, dogs and trapped vermin off “out in the middle of nowhere”, also known as “where I live”.
My cat chews plastic too, what the heck is that all about? And not just any plastic, just the handles of grocery store bags, which is ultra annoying in so many ways…
I was up at my future homestead this past week. It’s been vacant since shortly after the new year. It didn’t take long to realize that the mice had taken over.
Turds on the range top. Turds in the corners. Turds on the computer desk. Turds in bed. Turds Turds. TURDS!!!
I set out victor traps and caught four mice. Searched around and found a well traveled hole. Pumped that bitch with foam and as of today, no more mice caught since Saturday.
I was reluctant to use poison since I’m not keen on stinking dead rodents. In addition, I recently caught a Hawk that was poisoned. The animal rescue folks determined that it was rat poison.
Pneumonia!? Holy Crap! Glad to hear that you are getting well. Hope the kids get better too.
Definitely going to try get my hands on the Alexandra Fuller book. I have a friend who grew up in Zimbabwe and it sounds like she had an absolute ball ! It is such a pity that the country has declined so much. Very sad.
Wow , pneumonia!? That explains the yellow/green gunk you were coughing up! Gald to hear you are on the mend! I hope your kiddos avoid getting it!
I know what you mean by the crazy things you end up doing when your sick and your brain just won’t work. That is such a bummer about those seeds (what kind were they?). I started some seeds a few weeks ago (way to early, I was just itching for spring). They are now so big and I don’t know what to do with them since we have a late frost date too (In Kelowna, B.C).
I would be a bit hesitant with the poisons too. We have always avoided the use of them because of the pets we have potentially eating the dead rodent. I mean when a dead animal gets to stinking, our dogs love to carry them around in their mouths, re-bury them, or roll in them. Either way, we don’t want to take the chance of them getting sick from contact with poison. Also we got a cat recently, so we wouldn’t want him sick either.
We use these great traps for the mice that are really easy to set and they just snap down and to get rid of the mouse you just pinch the trap and it opens super easy. You don’t have to even come near touching the mouse. I’ll send you the info if you would like on the traps because they’ve proven to be of GREAT help!
Oie, and the one time we did try to use poison (my Mother-In-Law and myself – the Hubby’s were out of town so we were left to fend for ourselves), it took so long to kill the pack-rat we had caught in a cage. It was terrible, the thing was making horrible noises in the cage in the shop. It was terrible and slightly comical in a morbid way…..
I hope that you and the family get well soon! Take care!
~M~
Be careful of secondary poisoning in your cats and dogs. A poisoned mouse is easy prey even to lazy hunters.
A great big mouse trap is to set out a big garbage can, make a little gang plank up over it, smear peanut butter along the inner rim. They fall in and drown (in the water you have filled the bottom portion with). Snap traps work great in the house (we love Victors with some PB) but this would require hundreds of traps.
The poison we’ve got is the “safer for pets” poison. We’ll see I guess!
Ro – Your friend will love this then. This takes place in Rhodesia, Rhodesia-Zimbabwe and then finally Zimbabwe… A spectacular novel for ANYONE who enjoys reading well written books.
Caitlin – I wish I knew and I wish my cat was as discriminating as your cat. She eats any plastic she can get her teeth into, and has down so since she was a kitten.
Oy! Poor you (and the seedlings)! Hope everyone’s well soon so you can start the great mouse massacre. You’re probably already on this, but try to get yourself some nice probiotics for your stomach while you finish those nasty-but-SO-helpful antibiotics.
In the first 6 months after my twins were born I distroyed 4 of my very beautiful, very expensive cookware pots and my equally beautiful kettle. All from being so zoned out and tired that I would cook or boil everything till I could smell burning. Often the smoke alarm would announce that dinner was ready. Now we are saving up to replace my covented cookware but have decided to wait until we have finished having babies (no I am not currently expecting). Would it be so weird to register for it if we have another baby shower?
Ugh. I am so glad you’re feeling better.
I know exactly what you mean about the mouse sounds and waking up to them every night. I was actually a very good catch and releaser while Marc stood on tables screaming. Forget about cats and plastic, what’s THAT about?
Personally I LOVE your idea of catch and release into town, that is hilarious! I had some live traps because they were cleaner to use, but I dumped the little buggers into a bucket of water outside, when it was cold we had mousesicles.
OH MAN, I hate rodents in my house. I had to kill two RATS even when the carniceria one block over moved – I was glad it was only two and we’ve had no evidence since (they were in the garage). It was basically terrible.
Two winters ago the cold drove the mice into my kitchen…I won that battle, too. I had mousecicles as well (can’t deal with cleaning up mouse-carcass, so I got the live catch traps and did the killing outdoors.
Uch. Please don’t release them in town. Not ALL townies abandon their animals!