I’m listening right now to Geno talking up Feeley, which is funny because while he kept the Eagles in the game, he ultimately cost them the game.

You reserve the right to post it, but you can’t make any one play it!!

A Hearby is like a Furby but it has extra-big ears. Take that, near-loser!

It’s nice to see you taking up Patriots slack for The Poor Man, who seems to have disappeared.

But on to more important things: who will be the first Boston Fan to whine “We don’t get enough credit…why is my life so miserable when we own every conceivable sport?”.

My bet is on someone who posts after me.

He must be rattled by the close call. Non-existent word, link that doesn’t work…

Come now, it could be worse. You could have lost to the 49ers.

That would be worse in more ways than one, considering the Pats own the 49ers draft pick (which is the #3 or 4, considering they share the same record as the Raiders and Falcons (but lost to the Falcons), and have a better record than the Rams and the Dullphins).

um, just a query…is sports just way better this year, or something? it seems like every stop on my blogroll’s kinda sports-obsessed…why, the Poor Man apparently let it drag him into the drink to the point where he’s forgotten to pay his server bills.

really, I’m just curious. I mean, if it’s a case of just having to at long last AVOID the daily outrages, I’ve kinda gone there too…I’m currently watching more British TV (cough*bittorrent*cough) than is probably healthy.

don’t make me make Feministing my homepage.

This is simply the next part of Belichick’s Evil Plan to Destroy the NFL, of course. As soon as he clinched the division, Belichick instructed his minions to make believe that they were beatable.

“The Iggles just showed the league the blueprint to beating the Patriots,” said Madden.

What was that blueprint? “Rush Brady,” said Madden. Of course! It is genius in its simplicity, run at that guy with the pointy brown ball in the backfield! It’s curious how all the rest of those teams never thought to do that, but that’s why we have Madden, to tell us these sorts of things.

Of course, it was all a sham, since Belichick had his Evil Cameraz take control of McFeeley’s mind and force McFeeley to throw that jump ball into the end zone, when all they had to do was dink the ball until they could put up the tying field goal. Now the remaining teams on the Patriots’ schedule will go insane trying to replicate that running at the guy with the ball trick, while Brady and company light them up for all they are worth.

Does anyone have any experience with rodent infestations?

Cuz, although my ten years living in the country has given me lots of experience with country rats, we seem to have an animal situation that’s a little different. I’m wondering whether we’ve got another kind of rodent in our house.

We’ve got an unfinished daylight basement. In the last week or so I’ve heard something running very quickly – maybe it’s two animals? – seems like along the joists, electrical conduits and heating vents under the floors of our living space (which would be the ceiling of the basement). Always at about 4 o’clock in the morning. They sound….big.

We’ve had rats before – they don’t seem as big as these. They also don’t seem to RUN like these. I’m almost wondering if they’re squirrels, or something. Opossums?

I went down in the basement today and swept up what looked like rat droppings….except they were pretty big. I’m going to see if new ones show up in the next couple days.

We have electric rat-traps that we need batteries for, and then we’re going to set them. They’ve been successful in the past with rats.

But – like I said – this doesn’t seem like rats. Anybody got any ideas?

Calling New Englanders rodents is a little too brown-shirty for me, g.

g: Immediate guess (if they’re fast) would be raccoons, who like to set up under houses. Not sure how fast ol’ Pogo Possum moves, though the ones I’ve seen are never in much of a hurry, & I don’t know if they like houses. Same w/ skunks. (That is, not sure how fast they move or if they mind humans.) I think those are the three primary (only?) good-sized non-canine/feline mammals in the Southland, besides rabbits & rodentia.

And between the fires & general dryness, it’s not surprising that the animals are on the move/looking for new homes.

Don’t forget the new “greenshirt” thing one of the trolls came up w/, D. A. Maybe calling people rodents is green-shirty.

M Bouffant – they seem to small and fleet to be raccoons. We’ve had raccoons come into our kitchen this summer when we had to leave the door open for the geriatric malamute to do his business on his own schedule. But I’ll take it into consideration. I don’t think I can trap raccoons in the electric rat traps.

D. Ari – I haven’t heard them order frappes, so I’m not sure if they’re New England rodents.

Could they be feral cats?

I think I need to call the exterminator.

Why can’t our trolly friends at least offer some good advice on things like rodent infestations? You’d think they’d know….

Well, I guess deer too, but I doubt Bambi’s in your crawlspace.

Maybe I should just feel ’em.

Ooops. I meant feed.

Never thought of kitties. Could be fire-displaced, lost pets rather than feral ones, though I hear domesticated cats don’t last very long in the wild. Hope the exterminator will try trapping first.

I’m wondering whether we’ve got another kind of rodent in our house.

Luxury! We’ve got feral capybaras here in Alachua County.

Band name: Electric Rat Traps.

And yes, feed ’em. Maybe they’ll let you feel ’em after some Purina Skunk Chow or whatever.

If I were in Florida, they could be armadillos.

My mother in law had armadillos living under her house.

g:

* Raccoons, skunks, etc. are heavy. They make big deep thumping noises–it almost sounds like a human walking around (or at least a big dog).

* Conduits and ducts amplify noise and can make a rat sound huge. Plus, rats can get pretty big.

* As gross as it sounds, you can actually take pictures of the droppings and post them on a nature/wildlife site. I guarantee you that someone will be able to identify them. You might also try googling for cat/rat/raccoon droppings.

* You can also sprinkle some sawdust or baby powder in the relevant areas. The animals will leave tracks, and you’ll be able to figure out what it is.

* I’d guess squirrels or rats, with a secondary guess of some rather scrawny feral cats, but I really have no idea. Good luck.

[Rubs bristly chin.]
Sounds to me like you got a infestation of them familiars, ma’am. Best we lay down some poison before they start nestin’ in the walls and awakenin’ yer atavistic hungers.
[Adjusts left-hand shoulder strap of overalls.]

hereby

Trilateral – thanks. Good suggestions.

Well, off to sleep. We’ll see if the little buggers wake me up at 4 a.m. again.

Wish we had a non-geriatric dog.

I wish i were stupid and dull-witted enough to transfer my ego onto a sports team and passively absorb their victory as praise for myself!

Email Malkin that you think there might be illegals hiding under your house, filing for medicaid, and she’ll come by and stake it out for you.

If you do end up taking pictures of vermin scat, you must share. OK?

A moose once bit my sister.

Nö, reålly!

Mynd you, møøse bites kan be pretty nastï.

Hermit Elephants.
If I didn’t mention them, Qetesh would.

If you do end up taking pictures of vermin scat, you must share. OK?
Well, interspecies coprophilia is a little much for me. (Before the internet, one wouldn’t have had to think something like that, let alone type it out loud.)

Luxury! We’ve got feral capybaras here in Alachua County.

Ooo, we used to dream of having feral capybaras! We had to make do with water bugs.

YankeesPatriots fan renouncing trash talking? Right. I give you until the end of the week. YankeesPatriots fans still believe that the World SeriesSuper Bowl is their god given right.

dang it, no strikeouts.

Mo- capybaras are delicious; are you sure they’re not nutrias, which are not quite so tasty? I’m not far away and we’ve got neither nutrias or tepescuintles.

We have at least three species of rats here and the pack rats are the worst. One kept stealing the key to my tool shed from its hiding place and it was the closest I’ve come yet to thinking I had cracked and gone round the bend. I knew I’d put it there and it was gone! I was down to one last key before I figured it out. After I’d trapped out the rats I found one of the nests with a weird assortment of baubles, including two of the keys. Traditional rat traps baited with peanut butter are nearly infallible.

OK, I should have googled it, they’re capybaras. Who knew.

There used to be an eccentric French chef outside of Tikal in Guatemala that did really fine things with capybara, substituting it for rabbit in French cuisine. mmmm.

I bet the feral Burmese pythons love them some feral capybara. We’ve recently had the first reports of those pythons here in south Georgia.

Well, if anyone’s got a python they can lend me, I’ll let it hunt the capybyras (or squirrels, as they may be) in my basement.

They were a little late this morning – started running around at 4:30 a.m., not 4.

If they were reliable, I could work with them.

You learn something new…

From the Wikipedia: Though now extinct, there once existed even larger capybaras that were eight times the size of modern capybaras (these rodents would have been larger than a grizzly bear).[10][11]

!!!

g-

That sounds more like squirrels than rats. A strobe light on a motion detector works well to keep them out of attics or cellars. Make it so that when it is triggered it stays on for 30 seconds. Quiet, non-lethal and not real expensive.

Squirrels aren’t easy to trap and have a cartoon-like persistence once they find a place they like. Good luck.

Well, googling brought me a photo of squirrel droppings and some other info.

I think its squirrels. Makes sense. They don’t act like rats.

I’m going to try mikey’s idea.

g–

Up here in Studio City we’ve had rats (or “fruit rats,” which sounds nicer and less repulsive, but they’re just fucking rats, man). The landlord (who lives next door) had a workman put a bunch of glue traps in the crawl space under our house and in a week they’d caught sixteen (16) of the bastards.

Glue traps are horrific, but they work. Then again, yours sound like some other critter. Call Animal Control, but as someone else has said here, with all the fires it’s no surprise the animals are on the move. You may have to wait in line. Re exterminators, we had good success with Antimite.

I was really starting to sweat whatever was living under my house. Loud noises, wailing cries, thumping and clanging.

I was beginning to think in terms of poison gas. But I thought I’d better check into it more closely before turning to WMD.

Turns out I live in an upstairs condo and the noises were just my downstairs neighbors. Family of three.

Huh. Whoda thunk?

mikey

I’ll never use glue traps again after one horrific experience.

But the electrocution traps work great. For rats, that is.

We’re surrounded by Coastal Live Oaks, and the acorns this year are amazing – I think there are more acorns this year than any year in the past 10 I’ve been here. Maybe that’s drawing the squirrels.

Speaking of rats, what do you all think of Trent Lott stepping down?

Original Mikey:

You might try that strobe thing on whatever’s living downstairs from you, they might be squirrelly enough to be driven away. If the bowling ball dispenser doesn’t work that is.

As for Trent, he’s more like a particularly smug kind of nutria. Eroding the levees with his loathsome tunneling.

We had mice shortly after I moved in here. We used D-Con and a few traditional mouse traps. I’d never had problems with mice before (my parents just kept the attic constantly supplied with D-Con and that kept them at bay when I lived at home), so that was a learning experience for me. I actually caught one with my bare hands after he scurried into the computer room. Hopefully that was a lesson to any future mice: eat our crumbs, shit on our counter, we’ll trap you or poison you. Start messing with my computers and it’s personal.

I have to say though, one of the mice that was trapped…well, he didn’t, um, die immediately. That was a little freaky at first.

Mice, meh. Voles, now–violent, vicious, voracious voles–are nasty. They travel in colonies, and the little bastards eat the ones that get trapped. It’s not pretty.

My parents had these little bastards called pocket gophers digging in their lawn. Still do, in fact. They’ve become something of an epidemic in the neighborhood. Best they’ve been able to do is use this nasty, medieval looking stabby trap on the tunnels that they make in the yard.

What happened to the Poor Man site? The link doesn’t work.

One time we discovered a nest of anchor babies under a wash tub.

Did Brad kill the Editors in the last round Teh Photoshop Warz?

Well, interspecies coprophilia is a little much for me.
You can get wall-charts — ‘What Scat is That?’. But its the start of the downhill slope. Next thing you know, you’re memorising all the different names (fewmets and spraints and crotiles and scumber). You end up like Sir Pellinore, carrying around a few sample fewmets from the Questing Beast in case you encounter its spoor.

“But its (sic) the start of the downhill slope.”

I bet that’s a slippery slope too.

Maybe I should just feel ’em.

Ooops. I meant feed.

If M. Bouffant is wrong, and there is someone named Bambi in there, your first impulse might be correct.

Patriots fans still believe that the Super Bowl is their god given right.

(Cleaned up after your awkward strikethrough incident, Todd.)

Anyway, at least this season, Patriots fans believe that the Super Bowl is their right if the Patriots beat every team they play, which I think is slightly more plausible than an appeal to Deity.

Bugger. Caught in an apostrophe crime. Petards, hoisting, etc. I must be punished now. Is it penance enough to Protein Wisdom?