{"id":1923,"date":"2015-12-20T11:17:56","date_gmt":"2015-12-20T18:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2015-12-20T11:17:56","modified_gmt":"2015-12-20T18:17:56","slug":"circle-of-life-bitches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/20\/circle-of-life-bitches\/","title":{"rendered":"Circle of Life, Bitches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Circle of Life, bitches\" width=\"604\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/luBlbIlOscY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">There is nothing cute about mouse shit in your pantry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">There is nothing sweet about the staccato scrape of their hard little feet in your drywall, rousing you from a dreamless sleep. The fuckers may be fuzzy, but they are neither adorable nor benign. There is a reason they are called pests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And they must be controlled.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI think I heard a mouse in the house,\u201d I said to Pat as he wiped the sleep from his eyes and made his way to the kitchen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cDid you see it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cNo. Just heard the little tap-tap, and I looked for it, but then it stopped.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cProbably just the ice in the refrigerator.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I should have known better than to bring it up before coffee, but I\u2019d been sitting with this invisible interloper for two hours, listening to it rummage through the walls as I shook the curtains, crawled beneath the sink and shined my iPhone flashlight along the dust bunnies haunting our baseboards. The next day, I heard it again and uncovered hard\u00a0evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cThere really is a mouse,\u201d I told Pat. \u201cI looked behind the couch. There\u2019s poop.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">He grunted. It was 6:30. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Days later, I returned home from a holiday\u00a0happy hour with friends. The whine of our shop-vac greeted me at the door. The closet hung open, disgorging heavy coats and fleece jackets on the dining room floor. In the living room, sofa cushions tumbled across the carpet. The TV and its spaghetti of cables and wires hung out of their nook. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The back door gaped open. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI saw that mouse,\u201d Pat said. \u201cSumbitch jumped out of the coat closet and ran right between Coolidge\u2019s legs!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Coolidge, our 117-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback, was nonplussed. His sidekick Winslow, the vicious pitbull, cowered in the kitchen. The game was afoot: Pat wanted to use the sonic cannon of the shop-vac and the gentle nudging of a broom to encourage the mouse to surrender peacefully and leave through the back door. I wanted to get a shovel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Instead, we chased it out from under one set of sofa cushions into the pantry then under the refrigerator then across to the dishwasher and behind the stove. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The dogs had long gone to bed. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI want to call an exterminator.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cIt\u2019s just one mouse.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cHow do you know? There was shit every where we looked. It could be an infestation. I want to bring down a toxic cloud of death on this fucker and all his four-legged friends. I want him and all his kind to think twice before they ever cross our threshold again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI\u2019ll get some humane traps and take care of it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The humane traps were set underneath the sink. The next day, a daisy-chain of turds surrounded it. Pat asked me to give it a little more time before I called in air support. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">A week later, my birthday arrived, and Pat gave me the greatest gift of all. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The motherfucking circle of life, bitches.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The bird is a kestrel falcon and it rains holy terror from the skies in the most joyous and beautiful illustration of predation I&#8217;ve ever witnessed. Take that, mouse, and enjoy your delicious treat, falcon. You and your kind are welcome at\u00a0our house any time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is nothing cute about mouse shit in your pantry. There is nothing sweet about the staccato scrape of their hard little feet in your drywall, rousing you from a dreamless sleep. The fuckers may be fuzzy, but they are neither adorable nor benign. There is a reason they are called pests. And they must &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/20\/circle-of-life-bitches\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Circle of Life, Bitches<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-carnage","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1927,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions\/1927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}