The Ick Factor

I was passing by an area by an orange tree outback recently and got a whiff of something none too pleasant... Hmmm... smells like something died... Then Elly May comes in the house and starts pulling gloves on and asks all excited like if I want to go do a photo shoot... "What did you catch?" .. Back tracking.. A while back, we decided to get some new rat traps to attempt to make a dent in the plague like numbers we seem to have around here devouring our fruit and so forth. So Mom found this one that actually zaps them with an electric current and they die instantly .. or so it says. Well.. it had been sitting out there a loooooong time and no results. BUT , apparently someone decided that peanut butter smelled too good and wandered in for a closer look. Last look he ever took. We'd given up checking the thing since it didn't seem to be catching anyone but the smell did catch our attention the other day. Thus... .. the photo montage... If you are squeamish.. I suggest you skip. I know I say that a lot but I'm just warning you ahead of time. There is no blood but it is kind of icky .

It had become quite aromatic by this point. I think it had only been in there a couple days at most.

I am dead...

Fly eggs. Isn't that lovely?

Very... hmmm. then when Elly May chucked it... (tossing it fairly vigorously...) the tail skin slipped off in her hand. Yes... she had gloves on but still.. that is ..... well.... gross. And sort of nauseating when you have the whole dead rat smell to go with it. .... and the fly eggs too of course... mmmmmm..

Morning Surprise

WARNING!!! if you are squeamish.. go no farther . Just as a courtesy.. .. I thought I'd tell you , you just might want to skip this one.









Okay. For those who aren't.. you can keep going. Elly May came into my room this morning and said there was a surprise for me in the basement. So I grabbed my camera... just so I was prepared ....
What is this??

An empty trap?

Oh..... ouch.

Well, I guess he won't be rustling any more oranges will he? How very decent of him to die right in the walk way where we could find him and not like a previous one who decided to kick the bucket somewhere in our walls where we got the joy of smelling his decomposing body for weeks. Apparently a horse fly was able to find him though because over the past week we've had giant horse flies just appearing all over in the house looking like they just hatched. Lovely. We know what they were walking on.

The End of the Road

For this guy anyway. He was pinching chicken feed.

No more he ain't . Sorry buddy.

The Great Trapping Adventure..

Soo, we are plagued by an over population of rats... squirrels too , but rats are the subject of this story. They eat oranges, peaches, avacados, tomatoes (grrrrrrr) , chicken feed, whatever they can get their teeth into. So we have declared war on them. I bought a case of 24 traps through amazon... most of them work, some were defective. But they have nice hair triggers , which is good because some of the rats are small and can stand on the trap and not set it off.

Like this one, it somehow got itself into an empty trash can and we put some traps in there and it just walked all over them and nothing happened. So I starting chucking things in there to set the trap off and FINALLY it sprung.. Then for some reason... we didn't empty the trap so it got to stay there and become trap art. Now, I saw Ratatouille and adored Remy like everyone else. In fact , I feel a great kinship with Remy .. our relationship to food and cooking and all. Some friends even told me Remy reminded them of me....BUT, these are NOT Remy! They steal. So I refuse to get all sentimental over them. ANYway , I just love the nose here...

The line up....

Peanut butter and birdseed make very good bait. And the boys love peanut butter too...

Can I have some???

Please?? I'll sit nice.

This guy has some powerful back legs. He just stands on them.

Elly May's expert hands..

And here.. are the results. Out of ALL those traps, we get ... a head... Well, you see, we have this feral cat (Gingervere we call him) that is a very good ratter and also likes to pick the traps clean. And he got to this one before we did . I think this is the most disgusting picture ( I have trouble with eyes... I can handle a lot of blood and gore ... but eyes??? eww) but Elly May insisted it be posted. I left it big so you can blow it up to see all the detail... for the interested few. ick..

Well, another day , another rat.. yesterday we got another one. This is one of those small ones that walk all over the trigger without setting it off... But THESE have such delicate triggers... muahahah. I love the composition of this picture. Elly May got the angles just right. ;-)

The end.