Varmints and Vermin

I saw a commercial from Ortho today for mice called KILL and CONTAIN. That’s a little harsh. Why don’t they just call it Maim and Dismember and put blood spatter on the box?  Poor mice. They can’t help they are mice. Why can’t they just make a product called TRAP and TRANSPORT?  I would  buy that..I mean, if I had mice…

a lemur mouse...Yeah, that's right

 

     I am quite the animal lover. I don’t kill anything. Well, flies and cockroaches don’t count. Flies land on your food and lay maggot babies. Cockroaches hiss and are too damn sneaky, coming out at night..what cowards. So, yeah, I kill both of them. I mean, I don’t have cockroaches in my house. I remember when I was young, my dad brought an old stove home for some stupid reason and put it in the basement. Well, I guess it was full of cockroaches.  My mom was so mad at him. She went on a cockroach rampage until they were all gone. I never saw one upstairs. I think my mom caulked every little nook and cranny, even after the bug guys came and went.

I guess I wouldn’t have a problem killing termites.  They kill houses and make them crumble.

When I was married, my husband couldn’t stand when ladybugs would find their way into the house. I heard lady bugs in the house were lucky. Maybe someone like me made that up.  I had a physically challenged cricket in my kitchen window. I let it live among my potted plants. I mean, it only had one leg. That would make hopping a problem. I called it my kitchen cricket.

I don’t kill ants. I know you are probably saying out loud that I am a nut job, but you know, those ants are organized workers. They are the definition of team work. People who destroy ant hills are just jealous.

    A varmint is defined as an animal considered as a pest.  Vermin is defined as small common harmful or objectionable animals (as lice or fleas) that are difficult to control.

Lice are objectionable. I hate lice. I teach school. No need to discuss this any further. I will say that there is a policy that allows students in school with nits. I don’t understand this policy. How do they know when a nit is at, say, 99% and ready to hatch into a baby lice?  Just the thought of lice makes my head itch. It will itch all damn day. Shit, it is itching right now.

  I don’t have problems with fleas because I dont’ have a dog and my cat is an inside cat. But, I imagine I would probably kill fleas if they became a problem. They are too little to be significant.

There’s one creature I would kill if I lived in Japan. I mentioned this only because my daughter lived in Japan for a year and there were mukade all over the place. Yeah, the dreaded mukade.

They look like they have little faces. These things are scary. It is a poisonous centipede. Needless to say, I am glad my daughter didn’t have one of these in her apartment. She had a friend that was bitten by one, though.

 

     When my daughter studied abroad in Mexico, her roommate was stung by a scorpion. Well, that sucks. It was hanging out on the handle of her dresser in her bedroom. I guess they didn’t have screens in their  windows, and everyone leaves their windows open at night. Alex would wake up every morning with bites all over her body. It didn’t take long to figure out why there was a large rock in her shower an her sink. Take a shower, then put the rock over the drain hole so the creepy crawlies won’t enter the house..Yikes!

    I guess in the end, I would probably kill a lot of little critters. Lice have no purpose in life. I think I would freak out if I got into a bed and there were bugs hanging out, eating dead skin. That’s just wrong.  I know in some places groundhogs and rabbits are considered varmints. I would never kill those poor animals. I had a pet groundhog named Mrs. Daegle, after a character from one of my favorite movies, The Bad Seed. Groundhogs are cool.

    

 My little rant here was supposed to be directed to Ortho for their awful new product. I really got off subject, I realize, but, sometimes you just need to talk about things….

  that bug you….