Daisy

 

Grrrrrrr......

This is Daisy, my third foster dog so far this year. She gets along really well with Scout, seems to like me very much, and she has killed two rats so far in the back yard. I plan to keep this one. No dog is perfect. Daisy has her flaws. The previous owner had Daisy's DNA done and she is 49% Yorkshire Terrier, 49% Pomeranian, and 2% Chihuahua. Yorkies are energetic and feisty. Chihuahuas are energetic, feisty, and bold. Pomeranians are energetic, and like to spin in circles. What all those breeds have in common is "energetic". Daisy is energetic, and she spins in circles. In fact sometimes it's like living with a tiny, furry, crack head. Ever since she got her first kill in the back yard it has become her favorite place. She runs the entire perimeter of the yard along the fences checking for rats, thus pointing out to me all the places rats enter and exit my yard. Not too many are visiting anymore since Daisy took over.

Next week we have to go through the stupid ritual of changing the time again. I am not looking forward to that. Mostly because my dogs are very attuned to the schedule I keep. Up at 5:30am. Eat dinner at 5:00pm. At around 9:00pm I turn off the television and lights in the living room, and move to the back of the house. If I don't do that Scout will stand in front of my chair and stare at me, letting out an occasional little bark. Daisy has now joined her in that routine. I've been trying to get them used to later times so that they'll be acclimated by next week when the clocks get turned back. I don't want to be getting up at 4:30am and have Scout telling me to turn off the television at 8:00pm. Seriously, if I don't get up out of bed at the right time, Daisy just keeps walking on me until I do.

Nobody Died

 

Me when I could still run... kind of.

Last Wednesday I was walking Scout and Daisy around the block as we do twice every day. Down at Thorndale Avenue there is a long stretch of grass between the street and the sidewalk that they love to take their time investigating. I assume many dogs leave messages in that grass for each other. That day I heard what I thought were firecrackers going off over by the high school, which is half a block from that street. It was not firecrackers, but three volleys of automatic gunfire. Within seconds high school kids were running towards me, and right past me. One kid across the street in a leg cast with a crutch, dropped the crutch and took off running too. Meanwhile, my two dogs ignored it all and kept on smelling the grass, picking up all the gossip of the day. I used to have a black lab named Molly who would start shaking if she heard the barely audible pop of a firecracker two miles away. Not Scout and Daisy, they acted like the hadn't heard anything. I can't run anymore. So all this time I'm looking for a place to drag the dogs and hide. There were no cars parked nearby that I could hide behind and behind me was a long stretch of brick wall. So I just stood there waiting. I did tighten up my grip on the dog leashes just in case I went down. Now before anybody makes disparaging comments about Chicago and shootings, remember this can happen anywhere. Guns are everywhere because the NRA and politicians have made sure that they armed all the crazy people in our country. Murder is not new, guns are not new. My grandfather was murdered with a gun in Chicago, eighty one years ago. It is the easy access and the increased lethal capacity that the NRA, the Supreme Court, and politicians have unleashed upon us that is different.

Anyway, we all pooped right after that. Scout and Daisy in the grass, me in my pants.

The New Neighbors

 

Dennis from upstairs, calls me Gladys Kravitz. Only because I'm on the first floor and I can see everything from my living room windows. Five big windows that let me see what's going on from one end of the street to the other. Last week I noticed a beat up Jeep Cherokee parked across the street from my house. Not only was it beat up, but there always seemed to be trash scattered around it. I mentioned it to Dennis. He suggested that maybe somebody is living in it. Sure enough, that very day I saw a woman with a baby stroller going through the trash in the alley. Later I saw that same stroller sitting behind the Jeep. So I kept an eye on it and I then saw that there was a man too. Me being the good Gladys Kravitz, I decided that I would go talk to them. Assuming that they were probably from another country, probably from South or Central America, I brushed up on a few Spanish words that I knew before going over there. It went like this.

The man was standing behind the Jeep working on his bicycle. "Hello."

He responded. "Hello."

"Are you sleeping in the car?" I pointed to the Jeep.

"Yes"

"Okay, that's fine. Did you know this is permit parking? If you park north of the alley you won't get a ticket."

"Okay."

"If you get too many tickets they'll tow your car away." Not that the city of Chicago really enforces the permit parking around here.

"Okay."

"Just one more thing. Try not to leave trash on the street or the parkway. It attracts rats."

"Okay."

I didn't have to use any of my Spanglish. The next day, and the next day, the Jeep did not move. Also, there was still trash showing up around it. I had hoped the guy would have understood that I was only trying to help. Then I thought about it. He only said three words to me. "Hello", "Yes", and "Okay." Kind of like me speaking Spanish. "Sí", "Dónde", and "Baño".

 

Fondue You

Delicious cheese wrapped Diphacinone balls for my guests

 A somewhat well known restaurant across the alley from my house permanently closed at the end of July. It was a fondue restaurant, so I never tried it. I've never been a fan of fondue. When I go out to eat, it is so somebody else will cook my food. I'm not going to pay a restaurant for the privilege of cooking my own food. Next door to the restaurant was an empty storefront office. Just about the time the fondue place closed, somebody took a lease on the empty office and converted it to a children's pre-school/daycare. Of course they had to gut the interior and make it nice for the little children.

So right across the alley there has been much upheaval and now I have a rat problem. I assume the rats were living in the office building and dining next door at the restaurant's garbage bins. I can see a rat trail come into my yard from that direction and clearly see where they trampled down my wild flower garden to dig burrows under my back porch. I put one of my security cameras under the porch just to get an idea of what was going on. It was much worse than I even imagined. Overnight there was a steady parade of rats. Small rats, medium sized rats, and one giant, supersized rat. The giant rat is at least six inches tall at the shoulders and ten inches long not counting the tail. I ran to the hardware store and bought all sort of rat traps. Sticky boards, snap traps, and poison. I baited the sticky boards and laid them across the rat trail. The rats just turned them over and used them as little bridges. I used peanut butter on the snap trap. The first night the rats ate the peanut butter without triggering the trap. The second night, they broke it. Nothing was caught. I then went on line and bought an electric trap that guaranteed sixty dead rats in no time by electrocution. On my security camera I could see the rats just walk on by my thirty four dollar rat trap. A couple of them even walked right up to the camera and posed in front of it. I also called the City of Chicago. They came out and put poison in the burrows. It was all gone within hours and the burrows were even larger. My last try in the war on rats involves little marble sized balls of poison. The package says the rats will die within five days after eating it. If they eat it. They won't even look at the stuff. So a few days ago I took the little marble sized balls and wrapped them in Kraft singles 'cheese'. The cheese balls were a hit with the rats. They devoured that stuff. For three nights in a row I have served them up and the rats have had a nice cheese and wine party under my porch. I'll give the poison another couple of days, but I better start smelling dead rat soon because my next option will be, sell the house.