No dumping

While cutting through suburbia on the way to the hairdresser yesterday I discovered a sign.  No Dumping.  A testament to community optimism.

The sign was on a light pole, on a pavement, in a completely developed corner of Vincent.  I'm staggered that enough people dumped their trash on that man's lawn that he felt it neccessary to put up a sign.

Dream with me for a second.  A builder has 2 tonnes of building waste to get rid of.  The tip is far away, deep within the 'hood (aka Amalinda), it's late and he wants to get home to his wife.  He decides to ditch his rubble en route HQ.  But just as he begins shovelling... he sees the sign.  Realising his error he re-clamps the tailgate and commits to making a more suitable arrangement, or at very least, to finding another lawn.  Really?

I don't think I'd be able to sneak that one past if I took a tramacet.  And you can sneak a lot past me when I've had a tramacet.

Mouse (Continued)

The next episode of the mouse tale unfolded this morning.  What I never mentioned was that a second mouse had taken lodging in our kitchen and could be seen dashing across the floor whenever you walked into the room.

It was cute for a while and I assumed we be able to scoot it out the door at some point, but last night CP and I decided enough was enough and got down to some serious trap building.  The idea was we'd try a new design every day until we nabbed the critter, taking the opportunity to entertain ourselves with creative custom-rodent-nabbing-machinery.

I had a number of designs running through my head; involving a small 'room of mirrors', large pictures of cats to make the rat back peddle into a toothpick and CP was ready to mix an evocative female-mouse call to lure the refugee.

We deployed our firsy trap at about 10pm, a simple one-way-flap-trap.  More than that, we researched the prefered mouse diet and laid out an enticing spread.

And so it was with a degree of dissappointment when I discovered a mouse tail, a subtle electric buzzing noise and a mild smell of burning mouse coming out of the toaster at 6:12 this morning.

Mouse community 0 : Toaster 2

Mouse

Out of sight, out of mind is an apt description of our digs' garden.  Specifically the path running behind the house, used exclusively by tenant Greg.  The only time I ventured through what had become a wild and terrifying secret-garden'esque tunnel was to locate miscellaneous items that Celine, the domestic vigilante, had hung out to dry.

A man was hired.  He was given time, a machete and apparently loose guidelines on what a socially acceptable time to start chopping on a Sunday morning is.  Note to reader, its not 07:30.

In a seemingly unrelated venture I got down to making a snack after Church, only to find my slice of bread obstructed on entering the toaster.  Obstructed by a par-cooked field mouse.

Theory goes; our indigenous (unconfirmed) eco bonanza in the pathway had become a favourable habitat for mice.  Subsequent remodelling resulted in our house, ne toaster, becoming a safe-zone.  The mouse is just lucky rodent society doesn't sport a version of the Darwin Awards.