I’ve genuinely lost track of how many packrats I’ve killed in the little space between the Lair and the woodshed. Got another last night which makes at least six…
And every time I put a mouse trap under the Jeep’s hood, I kill a mouse. Every single time. So I got to wondering what would happen if I set two mouse traps under there.
So tonight, I’m setting four. If that works, I may need more mouse traps.
They say that Louis XIV had the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum cast into all the cannon of the French Army. It means “The Ultimate Argument of Kings,” and that always struck me as one of the most honest and up-front things any ruler or would-be ruler ever said. “We can dress it up prettier than this, but when it comes down to the unvarnished truth this is what it’s about: You’ll do as I say or I’ll send my goons to kill you.”
I thought about that for a long time. If there’s an ultimate argument, it seems only logical that there must be an ultimate answer. For years I thought the ultimate answer must be the bullets in my rifle, but it never seemed quite right. I’ve got bullets – he’s got frigging Cannon Balls. I mean, if there were three hundred million rifles throwing bullets at him, then maybe. But we all know that’s not going to happen. So if there’s an ultimate answer to his ultimate argument, it sure as hell ain’t bullets.
It finally came to me – and that’s when I abandoned the city and most of my stuff, and gave all that was behind me a good stiff Randian Shrug.
The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.
Little Bear 2009-2018
Laddie the Amazing Torso Boy 2011-2020
"Freedom Outlaw. It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it. It’s an attitude — from which actions always follow. It’s a do-it-yourself occupation. And a lifetime vocation."
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I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
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"If every Jewish and anti-Nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic."
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"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." The sophistry of villains - Bah!
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I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
- D. H. Lawrence
Aristippus passed Diogenes as he was washing lentils.
He said, “If you could but learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on lentils.”
Diogenes said, “And if you could learn to live on lentils, you would not have to flatter the king.”
Sandy Hook was a Gun Free Zone. So was the Westroads Mall. And the Aurora Theater. And Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Should I go on? They were all Gun Free Zones.
– Reality
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
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"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand
If ever a man should ask you
For your business or your name
Tell him to go and fuck himself
Tell his friends to do the same.
For a man who'd trade his liberty
For a safe and dreamless sleep
Doesn't deserve the both of them
And neither shall he keep.
- Frank Turner
Don't be afraid to try something big, just because you're an amateur. The Ark was built by amateurs. The Titanic was built by professionals.
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We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
- Viktor Frankl
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
- Milton Friedman
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
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There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
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"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen."
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John Moses Browning - The most badass Mormon who ever lived.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"
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The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
- James A. Baldwin
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– Witold Pilecki
Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.
- Sallust
"Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark."
- Lazarus Long
Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
– Christopher Morley
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”
-Frederick Douglass
ESSE QUAM VIDERI –
To be, rather than to seem
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
“A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
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Do what thy manhood bid thee do; from none but self expect applause.
He noblest lives and noblest dies, who makes and keeps his self made laws
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Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
– Winston Churchill
“Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Dance as though no one is watching you. Love as though you have never been hurt before. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth.”
― Father Alfred d’Souza
Are you perhaps making a mistake of leaving baited traps under the Jeep all of the time? Does it not signal “Here is food and a good place to live?” After all, the supply of mice and rats is potentially unlimited, given their breeding capacity.
Would not a better solution be some sort of barrier around the jeep? I know you can’t afford to build a garage, but is some sort of fencing possible?
Just because there is a seemingly infinite population of rats in the area doesn’t mean that Joel’s campaign is doomed to failure.
Where I live, the supply of ants is similarly unlimited. Yet by regularly wiping out every ant activity I find in my yard, I have finally created a local dent in their population sufficient to (mostly) keep them out of the house. That wasn’t an overnight job! It actually took over a year of persistence to see noticeable results.
Robert Evans, yes there is a parking platform with a metal edge around it, plans and directions are on the Internet, that Joel can build in spring if he’s interested. You make a raised platform with gravel, some people put wire mesh under it, large enough to hold the vehicle, then put 12 inch tall or higher smooth metal edging around it, bending at the corners, and leaving one end free so you can open it to drive in and out. It takes time to open and close it each time you leave, but the metal edging keeps rodents from getting access to the vehicle. Wire mesh under the gravel keeps the more determined rodents from burrowing under the metal edge.
This is ideal rodent trapping time and the more rodents Joel can trap now, the more impact he will have on mating when it warms up. Plus he has all those lovely thick winter pelts to do ?????? with. Ben is right about the persistence – you have to keep after them and you’ll never get rid of all of them because more will just move in from the desert to find food and a warm corner, but you can sure keep the population down. Ben has ants, I have rodents like Joel does and I’ve been discouraging their population growth for over a decade. It seemed hopeless the first few years, but as the years go by there are fewer of them and sometimes none. Many animals have a herd or group memory, and when you decrease the population the remaining animals often forget or never learned where to go and how to get there and either wander off or die out. Don’t know if that applies to ants and rodents…lol
More traps!!!! More traps!!!! Keep the mojo going.
An interesting page with potentially useful information: http://www.mrpackrat.net/vehicles.html
Oh, a mouse-proof fence? What kind of fence would keep a mouse out? That’s just SO .. I don’t know, what’s the word I’m thinking of? Ineffective, inefficient … Oh, yes .. IMPRACTICAL!
I’m thinking …. Claymore Mines. Yes, it might be somewhat of an ‘overkill’, but it would certainly be HIGHLY effective for at least one mouse. Which fencing would probably not be.
On the other hand, a Claymore is often difficult to acquire, and the mechanism for booby-trap initiation can be awkward. And, too, it would probably be destructive to the vehicle, if placed most advantageously for the destruction of mice.
One might consider a ‘drowning pool’ … you know, one of those things with a pivoted tip-board which lures mice to the point of the pivot, and then the board drops the mouse into the water? Good for both mice and rats, I’m guessing! Of course … this IS a desert milieu, so the water supply might be dubious. (In other climates, such as here in Oregon, water-traps are self-maintaining due to the 200+ inches of rain a year … but then, mice here have genetically evolved to the point of having evolved water-wings.)
Another possible trap is a maze-type device which cleverly leads the rodents to Rodent Hell! by use of an electrically charged pair of electrical contacts; when the mouse passes through the most fiendishly difficult section of the maze, he (or she) brushes against two contact points and several mega-joules of electricity course through its body. Obviously, on the most intelligent rodents would achieve this level of the maze, which would have the long term benefit of undermining the mousie gene pool
This scheme also has the added advantage of instant rodent disposal, given that the current is strong enough to burn the little mousie corpse. Probably would be best when solar powered, which I understand is a resource much more prevalent in the indigenous climate than rain for a water trap.
( I was rather fond of the water trap idea, actually. But that’s just me.
Just thinking ….
Jerry The Geek
The reasons the parking pad with the metal fence around it works are: the metal is smooth, and the rats/mice can’t get a grip to climb it; the fence has to be taller than the standing rodent so it can’t get its front feet over the top to pull itself up. The wire mesh under the gravel deters burrowing under the fence. I don’t have one but have read that they are rodent proof if built correctly and greatly improve one’s bank account (no more chewed wire repairs and tow charges) and attitude (the vehicle starts and runs reliably).
I’m thinking a moat and drawbridge.