Training Vermin

The more charitable of our readers will probably say that Fox has decided to train up these dogs. The more cynical would say that it's just That Time of Year, when strapping young Vermin set off into the wet, green woods to seek their fortune and find, instead, a moderately disgusting housecat.

Tonight, Fox set a mole loose in our bedroom. I saw her sitting in front of my dresser and I figured she was still hunting last night's mouse when, Oh! I spied a mole.

I went and fetched Dagmar.

Fox kept track of the mole, more or less, and I served as beater, driving the mole toward open space or at least out of whatever remote cranny it dove into. (Have you counted the remote crannies in your bedroom, lately?) A few minutes into the pursuit I heard, from the other side of the wooden screen toward which I'd been chivvying the mole, the tell-tale sound of dog tags shaking vigorously and the thwap-thwap-thwap of Dagmar's ears (and probably the mole) slapping around.

Despite big praise and treats and the opportunity to brag to Esme, Dagmar did not want to drop the mole. Eventually I forced it out of her mouth and gave her more treats.

So, versus small critters the size of a film canister, Dagmar is death on four legs. I've reset the rat trap; I'm very curious about how the next big critter will fare.

Vermin: 2
Dogs: 3

She Shoots, She SCORES!

So there I was, minding my own business, putting away clean laundry and Fox is staring at a spot underneath my dresser. The last time this happened, it was nothing - she'd been chasing dust bunnies or ghosts or something. But this time, instead of looking up at me guiltily and skulking off, she went back to paying rapt attention to the space beneath my dresser. I went and fetched a flashlight.

There was a mouse under my dresser. Huge ears, long tail, tiny little body. With the aid of the flashlight, Fox was able to zero in on the critter, chasing it off to a corner behind a bookcase. I'd never be able to move all the stuff off the bookcase and move the bookcase to get at the mouse. Luckily, we have a long unwound wire coathanger. Aoibheall is always saying how a Mexican can get anything done with a coathanger. I pretended to be Mexican and poked at the mouse, trying to get it to come back over under the dresser, which is an easer space to get at.

Instead, the mouse leapt up onto the bottom shelf, on top of some printer paper. It looked at me. Fox, two inches away from it, stared at it and sniffed. "Well, get it!" I urged. Fox did nothing. The mouse ducked back under the bookcase. Oswald came in to see what we were up to. He saw the mouse, saw Fox, saw me, and then wandered off. "Useless creatures!" I said.

Back to the wire. I did get the mouse to come back to the dresser. Fox shot after it, and then turned back to the bookcase. I looked around. There was no mouse under the dresser...oh wait, ew, there was a dead one that looked like it'd been mauled. But the living and leaping one was nowhere to be seen. Not under the dresser and not under the bookcase. I looked into the bathroom and turned on the light. There, on the tiles in front of the vanity, was the mouse. It darted behind the toilet.

This is a much better (or worse, for the mouse) arena. There are few crevices into which the mouse could hide, and all of them are accessible to the determined housecat. If only we had a determined housecat. Fox was not interested in pinning down the mouse in the bathroom.

I came out to the kitchen and asked Aoibheall if she thought I should just kill the critter or if I should give the doggies a chance. I was a little doubtful, but I figured I could get the mouse into the bathtub and close the shower doors and it'd be a tidy little arena. Aoibheall agreed. I went back into the bathroom and Fox had cornered the mouse in my shower caddy.

I opened the shower doors and Fox bolted -- I suppose she feared a bath. I fished some bath toys out of the tub and closed the stopper. Then I came back out to get the dogs. "Wake up doggies! Who wants to play? Huh? Come on, let's go get a critter! Who're my badass bitches?" A bit of stretching and they had their game faces on.

I carried them in to the bathroom, opened the shower door, and put the dogs in. Esme seemed more interested in the fact that she was on the other side of a glass wall from me, but Dagmar went straight for the mouse. She sniffed at it, it scurried a little, so she jumped on it, bit it, and went into the whole terrier shake-the-rat routine. Lots of praise. "Oh yes! Good girl Dagmar! Yes!" Esme looked at the mouse, looked at me, and put her paws up on the doors. Clearly, she had no interest in this critter.

Dagmar did her duty and killed the mouse. Those stuffed toy rats from IKEA seem to have been a great training aid. Time to get more of those, man!

Vermin: 2
Dogs: 2

Day Without Electricity

Saturday was Groundhog Day. We didn't notice, though, because we were celebrating our first monthly Day Without Electricity. The last big storm that came through knocked out power in the San Lorenzo Valley for three days (for some people, I think we were only out for two). Power outages are a fact of life up here in the woods. We decided to practice, just so that we're all comfortable and ready when it happens again.

We are already pretty well set. We have a generator that runs on propane, can power the whole house, and comes on automatically. (I am mystified by the people I talk to up here who have dinky generators that they have to pull start - what in the world are they powering, and what's so critical about the one appliance? Maybe it's grampa's iron lung.) We have many candles and we have a kerosene lamp. We have a camp stove, we have a wood-burning stove for heat (and it does a dandy job of heating up water, too). So really it was about staying in practice and figuring out any rough edges.

At sundown on Friday we switched off all the breakers to the house. We lit a few candles and the lamp (which is a prodigious heat source as well as being really bright). The fire had been going all afternoon already, so we just sat around. Peaches worked on a new quilt, Aoibheall worked on some notes for work, and I went out drinking with some friends. Not, perhaps, quite exactly the spirit of DWE, but it'd been scheduled already.

Saturday morning, Aoibheall and I drove down into town to get coffee and tea. We have the tools and materials to make it at home without electricity, but we also had a lot planned for the day and didn't want to take the time. Hot drinks and pastries consumed, Peaches got to work cleaning the inside of the house and Aoibheall and I got to work outside. I cut and fastened plywood across the end of the chicken house at the large chicken yard. I moved the waterer and the anti-freeze base (uses electricity, oh well) over to the big yard. Aoibheall, meanwhile, loaded up all our piled up cardboard into the back of the pickup.

I was starting to feel pretty unsteady, but we just had to take the cardboard down to the dump. Did that, came home, and I collapsed into bed. I had developed a fever and was feeling so weak I couldn't even shift a 7 pound cat. Aoibheall and Peaches went out grocery shopping and I stayed home. At sundown I turned the power back on. When everybody was home, we celebrated our productivity by nibbling on vegetables and hummus and watching the Coen brothers' remake of The Ladykillers. While it was entertaining, I must confess I liked Alec Guinness better than Tom Hanks.

Still to do on the large chicken yard: run electric fence around the yard. Move the outside feeder and the shade/rain shelter. We also need to put up something to keep the chickens from launching themselves from the top of the waterer (or the shelter) over the fence. Some sort of golf fencing, perhaps.

We're getting 25 new chicks in a month, so we have to prep.

Things we learned from our first Day Without Electricity: When we turn off the power, we should dump out the ice cubes from the box in the freezer. They don't melt completely, but melt enough that when power is restored they're just a single mass.

My fever finally broke last night. So now I'm just weak and tired, but on the mend.