Mice

Mice in the House

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mouse mice

It was hard enough to throw a big multi-family Thanksgiving this year, and then the uninvited guests showed up.  One week before Thanksgiving, I discovered we have mice in the house.

Thanksgiving dinner had usually been a difficult juggle between my husband’s family and my own family.  We tried attending two dinners in one day, and that turned out to be a disaster, with siblings and aunts feeling slighted that we didn’t eat as much the second dinner that day.  Then, we tried alternating years for a few years.  That also was difficult, because each family had some special “reason” we had to throw off that schedule and attend their dinner each particular year.  Finally, I said enough was enough.  I informed everyone we would not be attending anyone else’s parties this year, because I wanted to cook a special dinner for my own family.  My statement got misinterpreted by both families.  They figured if I was going to cook on Thanksgiving, then everyone would just come to my house.  Instead of a quiet special day enjoying my own husband and children, I found myself stressing for an entire month.  That was even before we discovered mice in the house.

Mouse on a table
A mouse on a kitchen table, ready to ruin your family gathering.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

I assigned my husband certain jobs – he was to make the yard look nice and neat, put up the Christmas lights, and re-stain the banisters.  My children were all given serious talks about getting their rooms neat and clean and keeping the rest of the house pristine.  I flew into full-on cleaning mode.  Carpets were cleaned, I deep-cleaned the stove, the kitchen, the front room, and the living room and put locks on all the doors for rooms guests would not be allowed to see.

I designed the menu, and redid it many times, remembering a certain niece’s allergies, my mother-in-law’s aversion to vegetables, and my sister’s vegetarian preferences.

Then, one week before Thanksgiving, right when I was heading out to purchase a new tablecloth and an extra table or two, I saw a mouse run across my kitchen floor and disappear under the kitchen sink.  I ran to the kitchen sink and threw open the cabinet door, surprising two more mice rummaging around in the garbage can.  Nothing could be worse for me at this moment in time than mice in the house.

I panicked.  I admit it.  I called my husband at work, in full-on tears.  Everything was ruined, what could we possibly do, I just couldn’t take it anymore.  Bless him, he listened to me, quietly calmed me down and reminded me there are great services out there that get rid of mice.  I should just call Allstate Animal Removal and schedule mouse removal service.

He was right, and Allstate was great, saving my Thanksgiving.  The day came and went, and it took me another week to do the post-party clean up and regain my sanity.  I wish I could say no to family, but I’m afraid next year, we’ll probably just agree to show up and then have to bag out at the last minute because “someone got sick.”  Then, my family will just go see a movie

Raccoons

Coyote Problem

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A coyote
A coyote causing problems in a neighborhood.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

I thought coyote problems only happened in really remote areas of the country, in places where people ranched or farmed and had to get in their truck to drive to visit their closest neighbors.  My uncle has a pig ranch in Idaho, and he talks about how he lost a favorite dog to a coyote one night when the dog ran off instead of coming inside, or how mad he was when a coyote destroyed all of his chickens.  When we’d visit my uncle, my sisters and I always had a great time, with the exception of the pig smell and the sound of the coyotes at night.

So, you can imagine how I felt the other night when I went out of my cute cookie-cutter house in my little cookie-cutter neighborhood to take the garbage cans down to the street for pickup the next morning, and heard a pack of coyotes yipping and barking to each other somewhere close to the neighborhood.

I couldn’t believe it, and my uncle’s stories came flooding back to me.  I don’t live in the boonies.  I live in a very populated suburban area.  True, the subdivisions went up only about six years ago, but the area was built up very quickly and is more densely populated.  Surely we couldn’t have coyote problems here.  Surely, I couldn’t be more wrong.

My husband didn’t believe me until he left for work early the next morning, and heard the coyotes’ wild sounds floating across the still subdivision.  In talking with other neighbors, we discovered a few households had lost a cat, and just figured the cat had wandered off.  Now, we suspect a far worse fate for beloved pets.  As we became more aware of the coyote problem, people stopped going jogging by themselves in the evening or early morning hours.  Parents started making children stay inside instead of walking by themselves to a friend’s house.  While the coyotes had not yet posed a real threat to a human, the potential was there, and we changed our lifestyles slightly to be more careful.

I soon grew tired of it, and so did my children, who wanted to get back outside with their friends to ride bikes or play soccer.  I wanted to stop worrying about the dog, who wasn’t raised to be an indoor pet.

While there is a bounty on coyotes in our state, we still live in a populated area, and can’t just go out coyote hunting without putting a lot of people at risk.  So, we needed a professional service to get rid of the coyote problem for us.  Fortunately, most of the neighborhood was willing to chip in, and we got a really good expert through Allstate Animal Control.  We’re all still pretty wary, realizing that, even though we’re not in a remote area of the country, we can still have clashes with wild animals.

Feral Cats

Feral Cat Scratch

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cats5

I had plenty of worries when I sent my first-grader son to the bus stop the first day of school, but feral cat scratches wasn’t even on my radar of potential problems.

He’s my first child to go off to a full day of school, so it took a lot of courage for me to let him walk out the door by himself that first day, go off and wait at a bus stop full of older kids, get on a bus with a driver I didn’t know, and head off to school without me.  He had assured me that he would be fine without having me walk him down to the bus stop every day, and I knew he was right.  Especially, since I could still sort of see the bus stop from the window in my front room.  For a month, every morning after I’d kissed him goodbye, I’d close the door and then rush to the window to make sure he got to the bus stop okay, and wasn’t harassed by any of the older children.

After several weeks, though, I was reassured.  He always walked on the sidewalk, played nicely with the other children, and stood obediently in line to board the bus when it arrived.  The routine settled in, and I soon stopped watching him after he left the house.

The other day, though, I noticed he had some scratches on the back of his hand when he got home.  When I asked him about it, he said that a cat scratched him that morning at the bus stop.  Even though it didn’t look very serious, I cleaned up his hand with some antibiotic cream.  The next day, I happened to run into my neighbor whose driveway was the bus stop.  “I didn’t know you got a cat,” I said, hoping to gently broach the subject of the cat that scratched my son’s hand.  Surprised, she responded, “What are you talking about?  I don’t have a cat.”

I explained what had happened, and got even more concerned when my son came home with yet another cat scratch on his arm that day.  I called my neighbor up, and we decided we’d both watch what was going on at the bus stop the next morning.

What we saw shocked us.  When the children arrived at the bus stop, several feral cats came running up to them.  These weren’t tiny kittens, but full-fledged mangy stray cats.  The children flocked around them, picking them up, petting them, and feeding them some bits from their lunch boxes.  My neighbor and I must have realized the danger at the same time, because we both ran out our front doors at the same time, calling out to the kids and shooing the cats away.

I’ve contacted the parents of each one of the children at our bus stop so they can inspect their children for scratches or bites, and my son has now had to endure a series of shots from our pediatrician.  Feral cat scratches could transmit all kinds of infections or illnesses, and I won’t take any chances.

Needless to say, we’ve contacted someone to get rid of the feral cats, and I walk my son down to the bus stop every morning, much to his dismay.

Raccoons

Raccoon in the Kitchen

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raccoon_venttrap

I was a typical little girl, playing Mommy to my little doll, pretending to feed it, quiet it, and change its little diaper.  As an adult, I was so happy when child number one and number two came along, and even though I was naturally exhausted, I enjoyed my life.  So, we decided to have a third child.  But, I was shocked when the obstetrician informed us I was carrying twins.  I complained to my mother, “If I’d known that was a possibility, I never would have gotten pregnant.”  My mother, a pragmatist, said, “Hon, you always knew that was a possibility.  It is for anyone who gets pregnant.  Be happy they’re not triplets.”  Of course, she wasn’t going to be the one who would be raising them.  So, it was easy for her to take a more blasé approach to my new situation.  Rambunctious doesn’t even begin to describe my boys.  They are now two, going on eighteen year-olds at a frat house.  I can barely keep up with them, much less my older children.  The twins got into the pantry and spilled the flour on the floor so many times, despite all my efforts at discipline, that I now keep our food under lock and key.  They hardly sleep.  They don’t take naps, and I often have to put them to bed three or four times before they’ll finally stay in their room, although they’ll stay awake for hours, romping around, making messes and lots of noise.  You’d think I’d get a break, since they sleep in until 10:30 in the morning, but you forget I have two older children, both of whom get up at 6.  One night, as I blearily stumbled down the hall to the twins’ room once again, I stopped, listening.  I could hear the boys playing in their room, but I also heard some odd bumping around downstairs.  Had one of my older children developed the bad habit of late-night excursions?  I used my Mom-Ninja skills to creep down the stairs as quietly as possible, to discover exactly who was doing what before they realized I was awake and they stopped doing whatever they were doing.  Instead, I was greeted by two bright eyes peering out at me from the kitchen.  They continued to stare at me as I stifled a scream, flipped on a light, grabbed the nearest weapon (my oldest son’s nerf sword), and strode resolutely toward the raccoon in my kitchen.  It didn’t flinch.  Not when I waved the sword under its nose, not when I hush-yelled, “Get outta here!”, and not when I threw an orange at it.  Finally, as if to say, “I’m not scared of you, but I choose to leave,” it grabbed one more leftover hot dog that my daughter had left out on her plate on the counter, hopped down, and sauntered out the doggie door.  On top of all my other daily worries and duties, I now had to raccoon-proof my house.  I had no way of knowing how to do it, and even if I was successful at putting out some trap, who was to say that my dog or, worse yet, the twins, wouldn’t get caught in the raccoon trap?  No, I determined there was no way I was going to add this responsibility to my list of daily chores.  The only thing on my to-do list for the morning, before the twins woke up, was to call United Animal Control to get rid of the raccoon.  The late-night drama is bad enough with the twins, no need to add wild animals into the mix.

Gophers

Gophers in Yard

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gopher1

Brent worked really hard to come across as a real manly man, sometimes a little too hard, and sometimes not hard enough.  He was, unfortunately, one of those guys who just wasn’t comfortable as himself, in his own skin, so he thought he had to be like a character from some television show in order for people to respect him.  He went for the bad boy biker look, which was a bad choice for him.

He wore faded jeans and a black t-shirt with holes in it, but everything was extremely clean and had a Febreeze smell to it.  He grew a long beard, but trimmed it so carefully into its shape that it was just a facial contradiction.  And the dark black sunglasses he wore everywhere, even indoors, cost him all of two dollars at a gas station somewhere.  His home was full of porcelain knick knacks that he couldn’t bear to throw out after his mother passed away, and a collection of lunch boxes from the seventies and eighties.

So, when the nuisance wildlife control professional showed up at his door to get rid of the gophers in his yard, he was more than confused.  At first glance, this stringy thirty-five year old who answered the door seemed like he wasn’t the kind to seek out a professional to get rid of gophers.  He looked like he was the kind of loud, beer-guzzling jerk who would pull out a high powered rifle, aim it at any critters crossing his yard, and yee-haw his way into the hospital.  But, as soon as Brent started explaining the problem he had with gophers, it was a whole new matter.

“See, man,” Brent started, “Look over there, man, and you’ll see, like, five different holes, right there in the dirt.”

Indeed, there were five holes with all the tell-tale signs of gopher activity.

Continuing in a voice that cracked occasionally, Brent said, “And, look, man, see I don’t want to get all girly, but those gophers are creepy looking.  I saw one of ‘em come right out of the hole, right when I was standin’ there.  And, it just looked at me, like it was daring me to do something.  I think I saw something like that out of an aliens movie once, ya know, man?  And, like, they’re just under our feet, right, just breathing and eating and doing, doing, like, gopher stuff, man.  Plus, I’ve tripped like eight times when I try to mow the lawn, and I think I pulled something.  It’s just bad, just nasty, am I right?”

As soon as Brent saw the gentleman from the wildlife control company unload his equipment from his truck, he knew he’d be safe.  He adjusted his dark glasses, pulled on his beard, and sauntered back into his home.  It was time to dust Mom’s old knick-knacks.

Pigeons

Pigeon in Kitchen

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pigeon_trap4

Megan posted on her Facebook status, “We’re officially adults!”  Her boyfriend Josh tweeted, “Megan’s stuck with me for at least one more year.  Muhahahahaha!”  They had just signed a lease together on an apartment two months after finishing college.  Despite the terrifying job market, they had both managed to find jobs after graduation, neither of which was in their chosen field of study.  But, hey, all their employers cared about was that they were college grads and were willing (or gullible) enough to take a job at much lower pay rate than most of the other applicants.

Megan and Josh were just thrilled to be getting paychecks, enough to at least find a new place together.  They’d dated throughout most of college, had talked about moving in together, and now it was a reality.

Moving day was fun, once friends actually showed up to help them.  Most of their friends texted, “I’d love to help, but . . .”  The ones who came through for them were rewarded in pizza and whatever odds and ends the couple now owned in duplicate.  The friend with a truck got Megan’s old Blue-Ray player.

Once the ugly, ancient, stained, hand-me-down furniture was in place, and the rest of their belongings were stacked in boxes around the two-room apartment, an impromptu party began and then petered off an hour later.  Everyone was tired and had other things to do, and hoped that Megan and Josh would return the favor when it was their time to move.

The young couple looked around at the cardboard jungle surrounding them and decided it would be tomorrow’s battle.  They’d done it.  They’d moved in together, they had their own place with just the two of them.  Frankly, being “officially adults,” was taking its toll.  They needed a little time out.  Laughing, giddy, they showered and retired to bed, slightly drunk on beer and novelty.

The next morning, they woke up to a neighbor screaming out the window at her son.  A car horn blared.  Somewhere in their apartment a faucet was dripping.  They were some of the sweetest sounds they’d ever heard.

Megan got up, smiling, and promised Josh some coffee.  He grinned and said something about how she didn’t need to wear a bathrobe around their apartment, it wasn’t like she was going to offend him.

Two seconds passed before Megan backed into the tiny bedroom.  “Pigeon in the kitchen,” she whispered.

“Huh?”

“There is a pigeon in the kitchen,” she repeated, slowly and only slightly louder.

“How would a pigeon get in the kitchen??”

“I don’t know, don’t care.  Get rid of it.  Get rid of the pigeon!”

He stepped outside the room and glared at the pigeon, who sat nonchalantly on top of a small stack of moving boxes marked “kitchen.”

Then the pigeon flew right at them.  They didn’t have time to scream or grunt – they turned tail and slammed the cheap bedroom door.  They could hear flapping and cooing.

After a flurry of activity, they finally found one of their cell phones, and called the super, who informed them he was not responsible for their pigeon problem.  “Wait, pigeon problem?” Josh asked him.  “You mean, this happens a lot and you’re just telling us now?”

After a little bargaining, and a threat to call Megan’s father, who is an attorney, the super agreed he should call Allstate Animal Control to get rid of the pigeons.

Megan looked at Josh wryly as he hung up.  “Officially adults, but we still need to drop Daddy’s name, huh?”  They decided to keep that part of their story just between the two of them.

Squirrels

Squirrel Infestation

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get rid of squirrels

One or two squirrels in the attic or chimney?  Sure, that’s a problem.  People try to catch them or chase them out on their own, and end up screeching and running with their arms doing the windmill thing when the squirrel understandably freaks out and tries to get away from these huge screaming humans.  Even worse are the times people don’t even know there’s a squirrel or two in their house or building until it’s too late.  The squirrel’s already nested in amongst their holiday decorations, or chewed through the cardboard box that held little Jimmy’s baby clothes, or gnawed through the wiring and almost caused a fire.

Yeah, one or two squirrels are bad enough.

Try forty or fifty.  That’s a downright squirrel infestation.  Can you imagine what kind of damage that many squirrels will do to your property?  Usually, the ground-dwelling squirrels live in colonies that large.  The tree-dwelling squirrels are a little more solitary.  But, the ground-dwelling ones cause just as much damage.  They’ll burrow throughout the lawn, chew on anything they can find (try garden hoses, sprinkler systems, planters, etc.), and eat their way through gardens and flower beds.  They’ll get into the house or other outbuildings and keep their teeth the right size by gnawing through walls, wiring, boxes and belongings.  Imagine nests of blind baby squirrels wriggling around in the walls, crawlspace or basement.  Imagine pulling out a box of old family pictures and dumping out mounds of rotting nuts.  Imagine the stench of several squirrels, dead in the wall behind your bedroom, kitchen or living room.

Many people don’t have to imagine it.  They’re living with the frustration right now.  Squirrels can infest apartments, condos, mobile homes, golf courses, houses owned by multi-millionaires, businesses, warehouses, barns.  They’re adorable and fun to watch, no doubt.  Watching them play outside in their natural habitat is one thing.  Dealing with the stench, the noise, the damage, the nuisance . . . well, that’s something else.

Now, a lot of people figure they can handle a squirrel infestation themselves.  They go on-line and study up and think they’re experts.  We get a lot of calls from people who have learned the hard way that they just don’t understand how to get rid of squirrels for good.  They either don’t get them all, or end up sealing some inside to die in the walls or chimney or attic, or they just get overwhelmed with frustration.  We understand.  That’s why we’re here.  We’re equipped with experience and knowledge to seek them out and seal them out of your property, we can clean and repair the messes and damage, and we have the equipment and expertise to take care of your squirrel infestation once and for all.  It’s what we do, and we’re good at it.  Call Allstate Animal Control today.

Rats

Rat in the House

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“Well, of course there’s a rat in the house.  That’s just great.”  I was speaking to myself, of course.  There wasn’t anyone else around at the moment to fully appreciate the resigned and slightly sarcastic tone in my voice.  There were days I loved being a mother of four.  There were days I was so proud my husband was serving in Afghanistan that I didn’t mind being a single parent for another six months.  This was not one of those days.  This had been the kind of day that ends with me sending the kids to bed early and in tears because I was just too sick of their fighting to bear one more minute.  This had been the kind of day that ends with me sitting on my bed, eyes glazed, can of whatever in my hand, and an open bag of some kind of junk food.  This had been that kind of day.

It had started off badly, when I overslept.  I’d stayed up late, because I had a chance to talk briefly with my husband.  His call had been delayed for some reason, but we did finally talk.  I miss him terribly.  I miss my partner.  After our conversation, I stayed up even later, feeling sorry for us and wishing he could come home and stay home forever.

Oversleeping means that the children are late for school.  When I did wake up, chaos began.  I had to yell at Martin for watching television before school, and make him get himself dressed and ready for first grade.  Andrea pretended like she was still asleep, until I threatened to sing our Good Morning song, and then she was up like a shot and whining and complaining that life was sooooo unfair to her.  Cody and Brady fought each other in their sleep, I think, because they woke up angry at each other and didn’t stop fighting all day long.

I got them all off to school, eventually, although Andrea missed her bus and I had to drive her to junior high.  That meant I was late for work at the recreation center, which meant I missed our morning meeting and had to sit in my boss’ office for ten minutes while she told me how important it was to get to work on time.  My boss is fifteen years younger than I am, and feels she has something to prove.

Work didn’t get any better during the day, but I managed to stick it out and make it home in time for the kids to come home.  Helping them with their homework seemed like a special punishment designed for the worst levels of hell.  By the time everyone had finished homework and eaten dinner, I wanted to kill everyone.

I survived another couple of hours while their fighting, bickering and complaining increased, and finally had enough.  They all went to bed early, and I lay on my bed, too dazed to cry.

That’s when I saw the rat in the house.  It stopped in the middle of my bedroom floor and just looked at me.  “Good timing, stupid,” I thought, “I’m just spoiling for a fight!”

Feral Cats

Feral Cats in the Yard

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“Feral cats in the yard again,” Sheila muttered to herself again, as she let the dingy curtain drop back into place.  “Why can’t they just let an old woman sleep?  Yes, yes, I need to sleep.”

Sheila groaned as she shuffled back to her bed.  She clung onto the bed covers as her right foot searched for its slipper.  Balancing wasn’t easy these days, and she nearly tipped over.  Soon enough, her big toe nudged the edge of a once-soft slipper, and she managed to scoot it and its mate back out from under the bed.  Spared the trouble of getting down on her knees, she sighed with relief and soon had both slippers on.  Who cared if their lining was filled with holes and no longer warm?  She wasn’t about to go through the trouble of purchasing brand new slippers.  Besides, putting them on was an act of habit, not of comfort.  She hadn’t had full feeling in either foot in years.

Her light and troubled sleep had been interrupted once again by the sound of angry feral cats in the yard.  Fighting, hissing, mewling.  Their nocturnal activities bothered her precious few hours of sleep each night, and she had had enough.

She groped around the night stand for her glass of water, and took a shaky sip.  Her frail body was betraying her spirit.  She felt as if she were still young, still out each night with her friends, drinking and flirting and having a grand time.  So many of those friends were gone, and the few new friends she had made weren’t interested in partying.  Massaging her sore left hand, she admitted to herself that she wasn’t up to it, either.  What time was it?  Ten thirty at night?  Ah, there had been a time when her night had just begun at ten thirty.  Now, it felt like an ungodly late hour.

She heard a particularly loud cat growl just under her window, a long, high-pitched, grating sound.  It was followed by a bump up against that side of the house.  Why on earth did the feral cats insist on fighting in her yard, just under her window?

Her slippers shushed against the floorboards as she made her way into the bathroom.  Sheila didn’t even bother snapping on the light.  She knew where everything was, including the bowl of ice water she had prepared just a few hours before.

Sheila grunted softly as she shuffled slowly back to her open window, desperate to keep all the water in the bowl.  A few sloshes here and there and her slippers were wet.  Well, that was to be expected, she supposed.  Quietly, she balanced the bowl for a moment on the window sill, and then, slowly, tipped it over.  The feral cats in the yard had been too busy with their fighting and posturing that they hadn’t paid attention to the soft noise above them before they were doused with freezing water.  Furious and sputtering, they ran off into the night.

“There has got to be a better way to make a point,” Sheila thought to herself, as she let the bowl drop outside as well.  “Perhaps tomorrow I will call Allstate Animal Control,” she whispered, as she groped her way back to her bed, slipped out of the soggy slippers, and pulled the covers back over her.

Skunks

Baby Skunks

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“I found baby skunks in my backyard last night and they were sooooo stinky!”

“Of course, you did,” I sighed.   I helped Camden’s mother out by taking him with my daughter, Emmy, to preschool three times a week.  Camden’s mother was a sweet woman who was overwhelmed by very active children, including twin toddlers who kept her on her toes every moment of the day or night that they were awake.  It was the least I could do for this friend who helped other people as much as she could, as well as raising her family.

But Camden wasn’t known for telling the truth.  Our short drives to and from preschool were filled with lots and lots of unbelievable stories.  Whenever my daughter or I said anything, Camden had to one-up us.  Emmy would say, “My Daddy has a truck and we get to ride in it this weekend.”  Camden would say, “Well, my Daddy has a helicopter and he’s going to hunt bears this weekend.”  I would say, “Isn’t it fun to read books?”  Camden would say, “We have more books than anyone else on the whole planet!  We have almost ten whole rooms filled with books.”

Momma skunk with her babies
A mother skunk with her babies.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

It’s cute once.  Then, it’s not.

I’m sure it has everything to do with the fact that he’s a middle child.  And, that the youngest two children are twin menaces that demand an incredible amount of his parents’ time.  If it was just telling stories, that’d be understandable.  But, he loves to lie, too.

I got a call from his mother once after he came home and told her I’d locked him in the trunk.  I’m still confused why she would even entertain the veracity of that little story, but whatever.  He told me, in tears, that my daughter cut his hair during preschool class.  I was upset at first, because he was sporting a new bald patch on his head.  Until their teacher assured me he’d done it to himself.

So, you can imagine I had no reason to believe his story when he regaled us with a tale of three baby skunks that he found in his backyard.  He told us they were as tiny as his hand, that they ate his mother’s homemade stew for dinner, that their names were “Stinky,” “Sweaty,” and “Skorp.”  He also told us that their mother skunk attacked the house, sprayed his dog, and tried to take his baby brothers away from him.

I walked him up the stairs to his house, and laughingly told my friend about Camden’s most recent story.

“Actually,” she said, “we did find three baby skunks in the backyard last night.  But, we don’t know where the mother is.  We had to call someone to get rid of the skunks.  The rest of the story?  Well, that’s all Camden.”

Of course it was.