Rat Warfare

            Back in November, I mentioned that we had a rat in the house – I never got around to sharing that we managed to get rid of it. At least, we’re pretty sure we did, because the poison my father-in-law put out vanished and we stopped seeing any signs of Templeton.

            Well, then on January 20^th Colleen baked a batch of cookies – and low and behold, that night we had a visitor chew its way through the container to get at the cookies. Reasonably confident that it wasn’t Templeton returned to haunt us, we named this one Donald (it seemed appropriate, due to the date of its arrival and the incessant trouble it’s caused).

            Now, in case you weren’t aware, catching rats is nothing like catching mice. You don’t just put down baited traps and they wander in – rats are clever enough to know traps when they see them. At least, this one is. (Also, a disclaimer here – I am opposed to killing the rat; I can’t even kill bugs. However, I also can’t live with a rat and remain sane, and peaceful methods of removing the rat have failed, so I have approved and even masterminded lethal methods for eliminating this problem.)

            We immediately put out the electrocution trap that failed to catch Templeton – baited with a cookie and the entrance concealed with the destroyed cookie container. Poison was also put out in the basement, as it had worked last time.

            We waited about two weeks. Donald wasn’t falling for the trap or the poison, but we were still seeing signs of visits. After a mousetrap was stolen (there were two that had been sprung for a while – it avoided the one that looks like it’s set and dragged the other one behind the stove and ate its peanut butter bait), I devised my first master plan.

            I had noted that every time Colleen baked, a rat seemed to show up. The smell was an irresistible lure. So, we removed the camouflage from the electrocution trap, removed the bait and cleaned our scent from it. We then placed it against a wall (an ideal place for catching rats), baked a fresh batch of cookies and baited the trap with one (sealing the others in the fridge so there were no others available).

            It didn’t work the first night, but the second night Donald couldn’t resist going for the cookie. Unfortunately, something went wrong – the trap didn’t trigger properly (we think the cookie got in the way), but a tuft of fur caught on the entrance (along with the untouched cookie) told us the rat had gotten a nasty shock. I was elated that I’d outsmarted this little monster, but I knew it wouldn’t fall for that trap again. So we decided to seal it out of the house.

            Since the rat was coming into the house through our front closet (and, from there, through a hole into the kitchen), we cleared out the closet (depositing the coats on the couch) and set to work. Using expanding foam laced with window screen, pepper, cayenne pepper, and peppermint essential oils (the internet informs us that rats can’t stand strong tastes and smells), we filled up the holes. Then we placed a few strategic crackers to determine if the rat was still able to get in.

            The next morning, we found that Donald had chewed several of our coats on the couch – on the opposite side of the room from the closet. It’s still unclear if it was searching for food or just getting revenge on us for blocking the hole. Luckily, the damage wasn’t extensive. However, it did mean there was another way in – one we’ve been unable to locate.

            A more traditional snap-trap was set on that side of the house, but, once again, it seemed like the rat was aware of what it was. Our hope began to wane.

            Then, a few days later, the cracker in the closet vanished – telling us that the rat could still get in there, even though it didn’t have a straight line to the kitchen from there. That’s when I came up with my next master plan.

            I knew rats to be cautious – they need to trust something and its location before they eat it. Donald had trusted the cracker in the closet, so we replaced it with another one – this one topped with peanut butter laced with poison. We placed two other crackers at other locations the rat was likely to go.

            Two days later, the cracker in the closet was gone. We rejoiced, because we’d finally tricked Donald into taking the poison! However, we knew the war wasn’t necessarily won yet. The cracker only had 6 pellets of poison, and it takes 6-30 to kill a rat. So, we moved one of the other crackers to the closet. This one took three days to vanish, but each of the next two only lasted a day each.

            The current cracker has been there for two days, and we’re holding our breaths. Has it worked? Are we finally rid of Donald the rat?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Lots of Crash

            This week, I witnessed my first ever collision. Well, sort of. Colleen and I had just parked outside the laundromat when we heard a loud bang from behind us. We spun in our seats to see that a collision had occurred just across the street – a car had been t-boned and had been spun off the road, luckily into the entrance of a parking lot and the striking car had fled the scene.

            Colleen immediately called it in to the police and, when they arrived, went across the street to see if we were needed as witnesses. Luckily there was an actual eye-witness who had remained at the scene. It was a complicated situation, though, because the driver who’d been hit (no injuries!) didn’t speak any English. It might have turned out to be quite a mess, except for one thing.

            The hit-and-run driver had left their licence plate behind.

            I had a good laugh when I found out about that. One of the first things I learned about collisions is that you stay at the scene until the police arrive.

            That was something very easy for the people involved in the three car fender-bender that followed to do, since the police were already right there.

            Seriously, what is it with humans? Why are people so interested in seeing a collision that they’ll cause one themselves?

            So, I went from never seeing a collision to seeing two in the same day, in almost exactly the same place. It’s a funny old world.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Death Slime

            This is the story of how I (may have) gotten my entire Dungeons and Dragons party killed in two sessions. It’s a bit of a cliff-hanger, as I won’t know the actual end result until the game session next Wednesday, but the journey is more important than the ending.

            A new campaign recently started at our local board game cafe and Colleen and I were probably the first to sign up for it. The setting for the game is called Primeval Thule – it’s a world that mixes a Cohen the Barbarian type environment with H.P. Lovecraft elements like Cthulhu. That alone should have told me that this campaign would be more intense than any game I’ve played before.

            It started out with our group of adventurers being sent on a mission to an ancient dungeon (surprise, surprise) to find a specific gem. During the first session, we arrived at the location only to find it crawling with zombie-like creatures being controlled by strange plants. It was a tough battle, but we made it through with only one near-fatality – my character (also the only healer in the group), who was almost turned into one of the plant-zombies.

            My character was saved just in time, but not before receiving severe brain damage (caused by vines). Our group then rested and healed up, and that was the end of our first session.

            When we continued on last Wednesday, we delved down into the ruins. While my character’s brain injuries would slowly heal, for now my intelligence points were well below what is generally considered the minimum for a character being able to speak properly. So, I decided I had to play it properly.

            While the rest of my group carefully explored the ruins, mine started ambling around aimlessly. My character was eventually tied to another with a length of rope in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Well... it worked for a while – right up until everyone else was distracted and my character wandered straight into a trap, getting covered with a clinging acid.

            My character was (barely) saved, but in the process another character was severely injured and I used up all of my healing spells. That’s why, when a spider dropped on Colleen’s character and knocked her unconscious and paralyzed her with poison, there was no way to heal her.

            Now, if our group had decided to take a rest at this point, allowing the poison to wear off Colleen’s character and for her (and a couple other injured characters) to heal a little, things may have gone slightly differently. But the group had just solved a riddle that had opened a secret door somewhere and, in our eagerness to find it, we ran straight into a group of animated skeletons.

            Now, to start with, there were eight of them and six of us. We had one person down and three injured (two severely injured). Our tough barbarian (injured from saving my character) charged right into battle while everyone else fought from a distance. He went down, but not before taking half of the skeletons with him.

            One by one, each of my companions fell to the skeletons (unconscious and with a chance of dying – it would take too long to explain the game mechanics) save for my character and one other – and that’s where the session ended. My character fighting one uninjured skeleton, and a companion fighting two (one uninjured, one almost dead). If either of our characters gets hit one more time, they’ll be down.

            And I can’t help thinking how much differently this battle would have gone if my character hadn’t stupidly wandered into that trap. Some healing spells would have saved us all.

            Yet, at the same time, it was the most intense and fun night of D&D I’ve ever had – and that’s saying something. Who knew that having your character mess everything else up for the entire group could be so fun?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Different Obvious

            When I was in grade 10, my English class read Lord of the Flies. I can’t say I remember all that much about the book, but I do have a very distinct memory of the projects we presented in front of the class.

            We were split into groups and each group had to do a presentation on the same set of questions. I don’t know if all the other groups handled the project the same way, but my group split the questions up, making each member of the group responsible for presenting the answer to their questions.

            The questions I took asked me to define what, in the book, was the Lord of the Flies and the Monster that was frequently mentioned. I chose the questions because the answer was so clear and obvious to me.

            When it came time for the presentations, my group went last. So, before making my presentation, I first heard the question answered by several other people. I was astounded – every answer presented was almost exactly the same. They boiled down to, “The Lord of the Flies is the pig head the boys put on a stake, and the Monster is the dead parachuter stuck on the cliff.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Everyone had the same answer but me.

            When I stood up to present my answer, I started by saying, “Well, my answer is a bit different than what others have said.” I then proceeded to explain how the Monster, while personified by the dead parachuter, was a representation of all the fears of the group of boys stranded on the island. Meanwhile, the Lord of the Flies was all the anger, hatred and violence that was awakened in the boys by their need to survive and their desires to do whatever they wanted. This was, of course, given visual representation by the bloody pig head on a spike, swarming with flies.

            I remember the class staring at me, dumbfounded. I don’t recall if the teacher’s expression was shocked or impressed – and I have no memory of the mark I received on the project.

            But I did find a deep understanding from that experience. You see, to me, the answer my classmates gave was too simple – they were facts pretty much stated in the book. What was the point in even asking those questions if there wasn’t something more? But others stopped at that answer, because, yes, it was obvious.

            However, to me, my answer was just as obvious. It was simply more abstract, but it had to be what the question was asking about. On the other hand, the stares I received told me that what was obvious to me hadn’t been obvious to others.

            From that, I learned that different things are obvious to different people – and that, generally speaking, when people find something they believe obvious, they stop. It’s obvious – why would they think about it further?

            I learned that, just because something is obvious, that doesn’t mean it’s obvious to everyone.

Something being obvious doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.