Critter Mayhem

Squirrels filled the air cleaner of my brother's truck with acorns.

I hear that auto makers are using soybean based plastic for wiring insulation in newer cars. Both my sister and neice have had to have wiring harnesses replaced because varmits have eaten them. They live in Mo.

Squirrels... critter extraordinaire!

Soy based plastic, didn't think of that!! That explains why we've had a rash of wiring eaten in our new cars here at work.

At work back in the 90's, at the shipyards, A good section of the city with a population of 6-8,000 we would have a black out, at least once a year.

The reason that was told to us from public service is squirrels at the transformer station would short it out.

Squirrels 3...cats 1...mice 1...

Twenty some years ago, at my job in Philadelphia, when I came in to work one morning, one leg of our 3-phase was out. About a third of the lights in the place were out and the same with outlets and PC's.

Turns out a squirrel didn't realize that a wet cross arm on the utility pole is a no-no when said squirrel simultaneously wants to run across the high voltage line. He ended up deceased on the ground with a scorch mark on him.

I was a little surprised. Usually the power company sizes those fuses big enough to clear the lines by blowing the heck out of small things (squirrels) that end up across the lines. This must have been a low impedance squirrel!

Let's see, in my old home, a 1896 Victorian that I totally restored, I discovered that the mice had chewed through a lot of the old "post & knob" electrical wiring (originally installed circa 1900-ish) when I was upgrading the entire electric system of the house.

Chipmunks running amok in our garage and making nice cozy nests so they can ride out the cold winter months. I now shot thems critters on sight with my trusty pellet gun equipped with a scope! They're real PIAs theys are! Hic!!!

Finding those damn acorns stuffed into the vehicle air filter intake trunk! Freaking gray squirrels have nothing better to do!? I'd rather they bury the nuts in the lawn first, especially my freaking jerky boy neighbor's lawn!

Hitting the "MOTHER OF ALL RACOONS" one night on the way home, that destroyed the chin spoiler, fog lamp, McPherson strut/suspension, and driver's side front disc brake caliper!!! That bandit cost the insurance company around $2500 to fix my Dodge Avenger ES Sport. My mechanic, who is also an avid hunter, estimated that the critter at fault for the damage weighed at least 60# or more! I felt sorry for him because he found remnants of rotting & putrid raccoon flesh throughout the entire front end of the car that he had to clean-out first! ***BIGGGG ACCKKKKK & YUK FACTOR!!!!***

You're lucky that racoon didn't launch you into the rhubarb!

BTW, you've captured the spirit of the post. Anger, frustration and amazement with a touch of funny.

Well me thanks ya Steve of the Great White North! Howzzz the Molson Gold, Moosiehead, and Labatts Blue been lately? I feel an urge to splurge and guzzle lately in this damn heatwave, especially after cutting the lawn today! [honestly, we need a drinking beer emoticon here....ummmm CR4 Moderators? ]

Actually, I was quite disgusted at viewing the rocky raccoon parts festering in various nooks and crannies in the car undersides! Stunk too after a few hot hotr hottest days of August while it sat in my mechanic's repair yard. Reminded me too much of the "Highway of Death" between Kuwait City and Basra during the Gulf War and it's immediate aftermath....lots of crispy critter Iraqis there....and in lots of itty bitty pieces. The Cluster Bombs, courtesy of the USAF and RAF, really plastered those poor devils, ummm I mean zap of them....and we, the Combat Engineers aided the Graves Registration folks in the cleanup, etc.. Sights and smells forever lodged into my gray matter.........

Hiya Cap'n! Yah, the beers are frosty. They line themselves up in an orderly fashion and willingly sacrifice themselves for the greater glory of slaking my thirst. Oh so tasty!

Hey Steve, if those brewski's are sacrificing themselves by leaping outta the fridge and into your waiting hands, then I'm doing a road trip up there to partake in their demise! I'd bet that Kram would show up too since he loves his brews so much.....

I can just imagine the U-Tube video of the "leaps" becoming viral! Ummmm, now there's an idea for a beer great commercial! Now I'm getting thirsty, even if it's around 8:30 AM here!!!! hehehehehe

Referring to Botswana again, a small lizard got stuck in the vanes of the school siren and stopped it working. When I removed the siren for investigation the lizard fell out in pieces, I was asked not to refit the siren but say it had failed; - it was a bit noisy and we had an electric bell as well.

Awesome. Stick 'em on a skewer, cook 'em up!

Steve, what BBQ'ed roadkill are ya eating offa sticks now bro? nyuk nyuk nyukkkk must be a Canadian thing me thinks....

A rabbit (I think - hard to tell) got into the substation feed. Blew a 2500 Amp fuse.

I guess the little bits of fur were your only clue.

Why do most rabbits have the name "Thumper"?-----That's the sound they make uder your car----Thump,Thump,Thump.........

Good one! Maybe a "bwaaang" if it hits sheet metal!

ROTFLMAO!!!! I've run over so many whabbitts over the years it ain't funny!

We have an absolutely huge bumper crop of whabbits around here this summer! They eat all of the ornamentals and flowers planted around the house....so much for the landscaping! ACKK!!!! Ditto with the herd of deer that arrive on our front lawn in the middle of the night to browse through the plants....would love to shoot Bambi to line my freezer shelves, but we live in a subdivision (with thick woods and large marsh located across the street behind the neighbor's abodes), but I'd get arrested for discharging a firearm here; too many transplanted NYC and Long Island tree huggers here now!)........ reall bummer. How come when it becomes hunting season the damn critters are no where to be found!? We even have a big fat woodchuck grazing on own lawn everyday this summer! Chuck meat in the stew pot is soooooo good!

I keep threatening to shoot 'em all with the pellet gun and serve them up at the dinner table, but my 18 Y.O. Step-daughter freaks out about eating rabbit and/or chuck + the ever-ending protests.

Yummers, nottin' better than eating pan fried wild rabbit! hehehehe

So many critter, so little time. Hell we have red foxes running through the back yard along the fenceline practically every night. I won't shot them because they get rid of the other small critters like the mice, chipmunks, squirrels, wood rats (can't shoot them cause they're on the "Endangered List") and possibly the woodchuck. Anyhow, they're amazing to watch with the Gen3 NVGs!!!

I get all the chucks,rabbits etc. for the dinner table without a gun.We have a Fox Terrier. He gets em and it is such a shame to waste them so....into the pot they go. (did'nt take him long to teach...)

Well, lucky you that you have a well trained Fox Terrier!

I have 5 Border Collies & a Welsh Pembroke Corgi. They're very good at 'rounding up' critters, but not killing them. LOL

One night last summer they found and surrounded a Opossum in our garden that had been munching away on the veggies. Of course it played dead as they took turns taking some sizable nips at it, but they didn't kill it. I went out to investigate what all the barking was about. I did put it out of it's misery with the pellet gun after pumping that sucker up 10 or 11 times......650 fps "Kinetic Energy Penetrator", as I like to think of the projectile.

Yes, it is true, that it only takes a single head shot! Had to drag the "6-Pak of Pups" into the house one-by-one, then buried the unfortunate critter...it because fertilizer for the tomato plants.

We've had rain here for months, the garden is infested with slugs and snails. The other day I noticed a nice courgette, I thought "I'll have that in the dinner tomorrow" Next morning a slug had munched half of it clean away... they don't make good hunting or eating them slugs. Snails are no better, but at least they are easy to pick up and lob over the fence into next doors garden .
Del

We could start a new thread on the (mis)adventures of our 4 legged family members. "Dawson",our terrier's best adventure so far involved muskrats,mud,water,burrows and us having to dig him up out of the lawn 8 feet from the edge of the pond!!!( he did get 3 muskrats tho...)

We had a cat that got stuck up on the roof. For some reason he decided to get his head jambed into the downspout. I got him loose, but you should have heard the yowling and growling. Hearing that at night would have scared anyone into running through a wall.

Speaking of cats, I swear this is a true story, it happened to me.

Woke up one morning to hear a very mad cat growling loudly. Lived in a rural area at the time and barbed wire fencing was common.

So, outside I go, along with a neighbor to investigate. I really wish I'd taken a picture of what we found.

Here's a 10-15 pound tom cat hanging from the second run of wire from the ground. He was hanging upside down, twirling madly around flailing with his front claws, sometimes hitting the next lower run of wire.

He was caught on a barb, hanging by the hairs on his scrotum. He must have jumped through the fence sometime in the night and got caught. (You can't make this stuff up).

We got a piece of plywood, gloves and scissors. We put the plywood between us and the cat and then delicately snipped the hairs that were holding him up.

He hit the ground running and we never saw him again.

Ooooh, that had to hurt!

So Lyn, what you're telling us is that you had him literally "by the short hairs"....or.....did you snip & clip his nutz??? ROTFLMAOPIMP [with apologies to our resident cat guru Del, as I just couldn't help myself]

Yeah, you can't makeup stories like that....truth is stranger than fiction.

Aside from his dignity, the cat was not hurt in any way.

Mainly mice in the engine compartment of various pieces of equipment.

Worst was a mouse nest under the plastic engine shroud of my zero turn.

I had done maintenance on the unit the week before, oil, filter, blowing out all the debris from engine and chassis, grease, ect.

First mow of the season was after dark.

Started mowing and kept trying to figure out who was burning leaves this time of year (spring).

With the engine being rear mounted, I did not immediately realise what I was smelling was the mouse nest and engine shroud burning right behind me.

Not much damage luckily.

Another pet peeve are the occasional snakes in the milk house. They don't do any damage but do scare the bejesus out of me when I don't expect them. _{The wifey gets a kick out of hearing me scream like a 6 year old girl}

Pesky little varmints

When I was a boy, I once knocked myself out cold after running into a wall after discovering a HUGE bees nest in my Grandpa's garage. I don't like bees. I would probably repeat that excercise if I ever found a snake.

Exact same way with bees for me

I used to smoke cigars. My fave was a good Aliados Valentino (from Honduras, I believe). It was also the fave of the carpenter bees wot lived under the tin roof of my shop.

One saturday I was sitting outside enjoying my cigar and the wonderful morning weather. The smoke drifted toward my shop, about 10 m away. Out came the bees, one at a time, and zig-zagged upwind toward my cigar in single file. I held out the cigar and waited.

As each bee homed-in, she'd (bees are all female, except for the drones) stick her 'face' right in the bluddy thing's ash tip, roast her antennae a bit, buzz angrily and zip away in a fit of pique. The amazing part was that she'd get back in line! Ha!

Dumbsh!ts.

Yikes! Count me out when it comes to snakes....

Back in November, 2009, sections of the Large Hadron Collider seriously overheated and were shut down after a bird dropped a stale baguette onto an intake vent. Reminds me of my days pwning whomp rats in my T-16 back on Tatooine.

Or worse yet, Captain Kirk's trials and, 'ahem' tribble-ations!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bprgl_4z6gY

Squirrels moved into my mother's farmhouse attic and tried to chew the wiring.

Mice nested in my grandfather's lawn mower and their urine caused damage.

Birds tried to pull string from the hammock to build a nest. They also take baling twine from hay. Now my mother ties string to the fence for them to take. (The photo shows part of the nest the birds built.)

The neighbor's cat repeatedly got caught in a have-a-heart trap meant for a critter living in a stone wall next to the house's foundation.

The carp in the pond ran out of weeds and so bite at the grass along the edge of the pond, making it look kind of raggedy.

The squirrels took bites out of our baby watermelons last night.

My grandfather traps hundreds of mice in his cellars and outbuildings each winter. He keeps a tally of how many per location and offers anyone who asks about the mice a fur coat.

They are recruiting settlers for the first Mars base you know. The downside of living on Mars is of course the dearth of pest-control services. Reputable ones, I mean.

Those carp weren't hungry, they were obviously trying to pull themselves onto land and hunt you at night.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

"2. Dead mice would fall from the sky when we started the combine in the fall."

It's a problem with the starter. Stuff rags in the pan-dimensional portals and it should clear things up straightaway.

No they had to replace the mice with gerbals so they could move the combine.

The newer CR4 members have never met Roger Pink. Roger had a mission; to rid the world of penguins. He accepted this responsibility with vigor and courage. To some, this vendetta seems nonsense. This is the story of the beginning:

It happened in 1983 at the Bronx zoo. Back then I loved penguins with their funny walks and Australian accents. I lingered at the penguin enclosure and was separated from my class. When I realized I was all alone, I panicked, and fell into the penguin enclosure. As I lay there at the bottom of the enclosure, cradling what turned out to be a broken arm, I heard an odd scraping sound. Looking up I saw the colony of penguins approaching. Dozens of penguins slowly shuffling towards me, the blank looks I had always observed from behind enclosure glass replaced with crazed blood-lust.

I went completely numb, the pain in my broken arm a dull afterthought. I realized, even at that young age, my mortality, and that these penguins, whom I had always found so adorable, wanted more than anything to take that mortality from me. Luckily my GI-Joe AK-47 assault rifle and spare banana clips had fallen only a few feet away from me. I lurched to my feet and hobbled over to the weapon, the penguins, realizing what I was doing, let out fierce cries and doubled their pace.

I'll never forget the feeling of relief as my hand wrapped around that cold steel. I turned and faced the penguins, now only 10 feet away. The penguins didn't know whether to charge me or run for cover. I opened up on them before they had time to decide. After I took down the closest ten, the rest of them waddled for cover, any other day I might have let them go, but that day, I decided that it was time to close the Bronx Zoo penguin exhibit for good.

When the authorities were finally able to help me out of the enclosure, there wasn't a penguin left alive. They treated my injuries and questioned me and finally released me. They were all silent when I mentioned the change in the penguins when I fell in. On my way out the janitor pulled me aside. In a low voice, obviously scared that he would be overheard, he told me to never forget what I saw that day.

And I haven't.

I think Roger may have ommitted an important detail here.

"I panicked, and fell into the penguin enclosure." should read, "I panicked, and fell into the penguin enclosure, head first".

Well, Good 'Ole Roger the Dodger was always a little peculiar, don't ya think? I think, in the end, he would have been better served by writing fiction novels....

I've always wondered if his parents accidentally dropped him on his head when he was a baby?

BTW, whatever happened to the bloke anyhow?

"BTW, whatever happened to the bloke anyhow?"

He sort of fell on his own sword.

According to his profile, he hasn't come back.

Last I saw Roger-the-Penguin-Killer, he was speeding away...

critter that cause mayhem..... speaking of snakes.

Growing up on the farm, baling hay was always a blast......er,..... at least try to make the most of it.

Anyways, at that time we baled and loaded it on the wagon that was pulled by the baler. One think, the haybine, the machine that actually cut the hay always had a some type of critter run through it, usually not much left when baled.

But, pine snakes were pretty common, as you reach to pull a bale from the baler, a big old pine snake would be staring back at you. It always brought a hoot from out of your brother, who wasn't a victim of the scare.

Anyways, our older sister would unload the wagons as we worked in the mow. And we would place the bale with the snake in the upper top row. so she had to reach up for it, but could not see it, As myself and my two other brothers working the mow would watch the reaction from her when she discovered it................as we were laughing, she would look at us, too bad we couldn't hear her. She never quit though....except once.

yes a gift that keeps on giving.

This one could have being written by Stephan King.

I was in California, helping to set up a cheese process line. One of the local contractors was telling me that the week before, he had to work under a used drain table that was outside to be brought into the building. (a drain table is used to make cheese to drain off the whey).

Anyways he had to crawl under it, these table where about 6 feet wide by 50-70 feet long. It had legs so that there is about a 12" clearance to crawl or wiggle under (very confined area, with not much room for movement, very cramped actually).

Well he was cutting and welding, and crap was dropping on his chest from from where was welding, but, with the helmet he never paid attention to it, but because the table was used and worn, he thought that it was the carbon steel from inside of it flaking off.

When he finished working on it, he actually took his welding helmet off looked to see what this crap was. It wasn't crap, it was spiders. And not any old spider, it was black widows. All over this guys chest.

The guy that was working with him, said, he never heard him scream so loud, and he said he got out from under that table ASAP and then he ran after he got out..

There was more that let up to this story, but it would give too much away.

Earlier, I forgot to include this to my "Critter Mayhem List":

Back in the early spring of '95 at my old 1986 Victorian I used to study for the PE Exam out back sitting at the top of the stairwell to our basement puffing away on my smokes. My now X wasn't a smoker and insisted I could not smoke in the house. Okay, no problem there. During a few days we experienced a lot of early spring rains...a lot of rain, to the point the storm sewers and sanitary sewer were backing up. Unfortunately, we had a hole in the cast iron clean-out cap for the sanitary sewer lateral. Also, the house sat directly on bedrock with all the increasing ground nowheres to go but into the basement. Of course one night we had a power outage and upon waking the next morning I discovered that the sump pump wasn't working. We had about 4 inches of standing water throughout the basement. I got the pump back up running since the power had since been restored.

I preceding sit down at the head of the stairs drinking my first mug of Java while reading my review manual......I hear splash splash splash. WTF? Must be those damn mice again. I could never rid the house of them. I clear my throat very loudly hoping to scare the little buggers away until I was finished studying. Silence for a few minutes and all is well. Splash splash splash, but closer this time to the stairs. Damn active BIG mice I think...probably one of those field mice and not your common little gray mouse. I started whistling this time for a few minutes, and again it is quite quiet for another 5 minutes. Good, that must've scare the chit outta them! Next thing I hear is sound of claw marks on wood, like when you hear squirrels scampering up a tree. Oooookkkkaaaayyyy, what the heck am I hearing and what is making that noise?! I slowly lower my review manual (my nose was buried in it closely due to the sh**ty light level).....wwooooooooooo, there no more than 2 feet away from me is a huge Norwegian Sewer Rat, all covered with slime and lots of chit, sitting there frozen in time and space, on the left stair stringer staring back at me very intently. It literally scared the chit outta me and I screamed like a 6-year old little girl at the top of my freaking lungs!!!! Talk about instantaneous coronary arrest!!!!! the rat is just as scared as me and jumps to the basement floor some 8 feet below and lands with a huge splash! My X opens the door 1/2 minute later to ask what's up? I apparently woke her up because it was around 5:30 AM. Of course she laughs her a** off at my girlish screaming and heavy breathing! Of course she labels me that "Great Army Hero" right there and then..."scared of a little mouse eh" she quickly declares! Jessshhhh!!!!!

Of course I blow off work that morning to call the local critter exterminator who arrives around mid-morning....he quickly surveys the basement, and he declares "yup, you have rats!" No chit Sherlock.... He plants a whole bunch of of those blue-green rat poison blocks everywhere that's dry, plus stuffs some though the broken sewer cap for extra measure. My wife and I don't enter the basement for the next 2 days.

Two days later I venture forth down the basement stairs with dreaded anticipation. I HATE RATS as much as snakes! I carry a St. Louis Slugger with me for protection against the dreaded rats if any are still alive. That morning I dispose of 4 rat carcasses. Good, that's the end of them and the basement is finally beginning to get dried out.

Upon entering the abode I declare to the missus that "All is clear Honey...they're all dead"! It's a Saturday afternoon and Wife proceeds to go down to the basement to do a load of laundry...next to the washer is a large wicker laundry basket full of dirty towels, kid's stuffed animals and clothes that were left down there 3 days before. Apparently, my X didn't get around to doing them after work and dinner before my great rat encounter. I'm watching a NASCAR race on TV in the Living room, when all of a sudden I hear a huge primal scream (actually a screech) from the X down in the basement. I rushed through the kitchen, quickly open the back door and land on the basement stair landing while asking what's up Erin?

She comes to the foot of the stairs crying and shaking, then says " when I reached into the laundry basket it felt like I was picking up one of the kid's soft cuddly stuff animals that was under one of the bath towels....more crying, louder this time.....fully open faucet...."it wasn't a stuffed animal...it was a dead rat!".

I surmise that the rat had eaten one of the large poison blocks that had been sitting atop the basement window ledge above the washing machine (and laundry basket), then crawled down and decided to take a snooze in the laundry basket, where it eventually expired.

I howled so loud with laughter I almost had a second coronary! I laughed so hard for the next 15 minutes my ribs hurt badly. Naturally, I'm a "%^*#@@$!!! bad-a**" for laughing at her for even touching a dead-as-doornail's rat, let alone a dead sewer rat in her clothes! Please note, that this is a woman who used to wear surgical gloves while working with raw meats, especially hamburger meat. Some Occupational Therapist you made baby....how'd you get throught those Anatomy courses that you had to take in college? I laugh some more, and then she calls mommy on the telephone crying her eyes out. I keep on laughing just to bug the chit outta her! Rub it in man, keep going.

In the end: Payback is a real b***h! whenever I can, and that isn't often because I rarely run into her over the years, I remind her of the "cute cuddly stuffed rat" in her laundry basket that she liked to cuddle....just so I can get a rise outta her. LOL Like I said before, payback is a b***h!

Sooooo Soory for the length of this story, but it's classic!

"All is clear Honey...they're all dead"! hehehehehehehe hahahahahahaha

Similar story, but with a wasp...

A wasp got into our house one fall. I've mentioned already that I don't like bees, and I like wasps even less. Anyways, this wasp got into the house and proceeded to bounce itself off the window trying to get back out. To my eyes, that wasp was as big as a football [a Canadian football...our balls are bigger than yours!]. My fight or flight reaction kicked in and I chose to run...out the front door and onto the street, yelling for my wife to kill it. She couldn't hear me because she had run out the back door and was half a block away! So now, despite my fear, I've got the kill those little buggers myself. I usually get rewarded with some...never mind.

Speaking of bug zappers, you ever test one out on yourself? You know, those ones shaped like a tennis racket? One day, I decided I should warn the kids about what would happen if they decided to "play" with one. They pack quite a wallop, let me tell you.

Steve, I'm with you in hating bees and wasps! I'm highly allergic to their stings.

Hit the freaking wasp with a fly swatter!

I have one of those electronic tennis racket-type fly swatters and have yet to kill a fly with one! TOTALLY Useless! Yeappers, they do pack a powerful punch....problem is getting the %#$^&#$!!! fly to launch into it!

Mice: Ate a Backup generator control board.

Mice, in my case....Bought an old snowmobile at a farm auction in Alberta. It was a '75 Yamaha with about 300 miles on the clock...and it was purchased in 2005. Broke through the 2" of pigeon poop to load it on the pickup. Shoulda suspected something as mice were deserting the machine in droves as we made the two hour haul back to BC. Spent way too much time watching the little b*sturds in the rear view mirror appear on the machines seat and eventually bail off the back tailgate. It's lucky I didn't drive off the road.

Anyway, the machine started right up but wouldn't get above an idle. Turned out the whole exhaust system was full from end to end with mouse nest. Had to heat the whole exhaust up red hot with a torch to burn it out.

Elk, another time...I was just coming home from work one day late in the fall. Pitch black out. Caught the glow of the eyes of about 40 Elk in our hayfield with my headlights. They tend to dig out (and destroy) the grass through the snow as well as compete with the horses for bales of hay. So we put the fear of humans into them every chance we get to try to keep them at a distance. Unbenownst to me, they had been pulling at the couple of bales that were left in the baler at the end of the season. They had pulled out the baler twine, too, which was laying on the ground beside the baler. It was hidden in the foot of snow that was on the ground, so I drove over it as I kicked the pickup into 4 wheel and blazed across the field after them. Well, my rear axle hooked up to the two twines that were connected at the other end to the two 9600 foot rolls of twine in the baler twine box.

So I was blasting across the field chasing 40 elk with a couple of twine strings paying out behind me. Normally they just run off the field and up the mountain. Not this time. they ran around the field in big circles with this crazed dude in hot pursuit. Finally they left and I left the field from a different point. Found the twine hooked on the truck and cut it off. Picked up the remaining 18,200 feet off the field the next spring.

Jon.

"Turned out the whole exhaust system was full from end to end with mouse nest."

Exactly why it rained mice when we started the combine.

Fun on the farm...we used to sneak up on sleeping cows in the middle of the night, jump on the fence, shout 'OOGABOOGABOOGA' and watch them stampede, shyte flying everywhere. Due to their poor memory retention, we could do that over and over until we got bored. Then we'd head off to the turkey barn for more fun.

My brother once had an owl's nest in his fireplace chimney. On the first fire of the winter, the owl fell into the fireplace and cowered in a corner. Luckily, my brother and his wife were able to rescue the owl quickly from the flames and get it patched up by the vet.

Tornado there is a passage in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in which one of the characters has the same incident happen to an owl in class. The owl did not make it.

At least once a year a squirrel manages to fry itself and the one of the 2 pole transformers here at work. We lose most but not all power for about 5 hours each time.

Not sure what the stupid beast see in playing with that kind of power but they continue to do it. You would think the utility company would figure out a way to stop them. After all its their equipment that the little buggers are destroying.

Come to think of it its just about this time of year we have our annual squirrel BBQ.

Friends went to their holiday home in South Australia for the first time that summer. Long drive, needed to use the lavatory. Did so then pressed the flush button. Nothing, no water. Took top off cistern, plenty of water and valve operating ok. Took a stick and prodded round the inside top of the bowl to dislodge a brown snake that had been sleeping there, neatly blocking off the water. Very fast exit.

Living in the country surrounded by woods we have encountered just about everything! Wasp nests in anything that has a small hole in it...latest was a bedframe that had been stored in the barn, mice get into everything including my wife's Jeep. They ate the wiring from her alternator and left her stranded in town. She refers to them as the "al Quaeda" mice! Nests in my logging truck...always interesting to see where they pop up when I start it up! I had one pop up out of the defrost vent and give me a real dirty look! Wasps get into the carb system on anything they can access. Squirrels? We shoot the damn things here! I got rid of the chipmuncks a few years ago with some well placed rat poison. I also have some friendly birds that like them! Deer will stand 10 ft outside the dog kennel and tease the dogs as they go berserk barking at them. I have to scare them off now and then (the deer not the dogs!). Then there was my friends cat the used to sleep on the nice warm radiator of her truck...now we call the one eyed, three legged, half tailed critter "Fan Belt" !

Strange what you find in a fuse board.

So that's what a semiconductor looks like.

Don't recognize the color coding on that right wire

While storing vintage cars we were getting a lot of rodent damage including droppings, cut wires, nesting in seats etc. Mothballs solved the problem 100%. every car got some inside and under the hood area as well as the trunk if so equipped. Effective on mice, rats, squirrels and maybe others.

If you are having problems with mice or other critters and don't like the smell of

mothballs, there is another way to keep them out.....

You use the anti-static dryer sheets (Bounce) smells lots better and works great!

I used them in my old trailer in Vermont, not one critter found when I opened it up that spring and it smelled dryer-fresh!

Yep, we do the same thing! Good tip.

Growing up on the farm, we lived in an older house........

When I was a kid, I recall in the evening watching tv with the family and a bat would be in the house.

As a kid, We would spend the next half hour in pure excitement and fright trying to get the bat out of the house.

Now a days, you have to pay for that type of entertainment.

Use a tennis racket to swat down the freaking bat! Works great!!!!

It doesn't have to be a metal or graphite frame racket...a wooden one will do just fine!

Bats are cool, don't whack 'em.
But all those edible critters... I thought it was compulsory to discharge firearms and shout yeee haw in the US of A.
Could you get away with shootin' 'em with a bow?
Can't shoot nuffin' wiv a bow in UK, not even rioters/looters/bankers or politicians...ain't fair
Del

"Can't shoot nuffin' wiv a bow in UK, not even rioters/looters/bankers or politicians..."

Well, that sucks! You're missin' out on a lot of fun. Can you waterboard 'em?

Del, you're right about not killing bats 'cause they eat a lot of bugs! I haven't kill a bat in almost 30 years....

Hmmmm, me using a bow? LMAO I haven't used a bow since high school, some 36 years ago. With my luck the arrow would launch over the fence and kill the neighbor's pussy (sorry about that Del! LOL)....... *** Kinda like Shades of "A Fish Called Wanda", when actor Michael (Paylen?) whatshisname???? accidentally kills the old lady's 3 dogs***

Geesshhh, ya can't even shoot the bankers and politicals there? What fun is that? my my my a "Nanny State" if there ever was one!? So much for the "British Empire"!!!!!

coming off the farm,........... tennis was not our sport of choice... ...... closest thing was maybe a badminton racket, next closest was a broom.

We would hold up a sheet, and walk it outside.

And bats are protected by Federal and State laws.

I recall, one time recently (about 3 years ago) a bat got into my friends house, the bat was very strange, it flew into things, curtains, lamps, coat rack, table center pieces...........and appeared to fly towards people. After having grown up and experienced with bats, I never saw one that acted like this.

I held up a sheet to walk it outside, As I looked over the sheet, it was about two feet away, I raise the sheet up and it actually flew into the sheet. This was NOT exciting.

Sound familiar

Don't have to worry about it anymore.

Roughly a million Mexican free-tail bats live under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas. It is the largest urban bat population in the world. Every evening, beginning around the first of June, they leave en masse to forage, consuming up to 250 tons of insects per night. The first time I visited Austin I noticed the lack of bugs around the lights at night. I asked about this and they told me that it was due to the large bat population.

http://meninblack.wikia.com/wiki/Edgar_the_Bug

When I was in college, my basement literally filled with 6" of sewage while I was out of town. The landlord called a plumber and they started snaking out our pipes, which they were eventually able to clear. They had one of their guys go out to the end of the sewage main and catch whatever it was that they had "un-stuck." It ended up being a squirrel.

The squirrel had climbed down an uncovered vent on the roof (the ones that normally have a u-shaped bend on the top) and lodged himself all the way below our house where our sewage pipe joined the main for the whole block. Anytime anybody in my block flushed, it was building up at the squirrel and backing up into my basement. The house was uninhabitable for a couple weeks while a crew cleaned, disinfected, tore out the panelling, and refinished the basement. It sucked.

Another good experience while millwright at the auto injecting molding plant we had a blackout preceded by a very loud bang. I got hold of one of the electricians and went out to the transformer compound and one of the three had the door open. Head engineer was called in as well as Utilities Company. They opened the compound and stood in front of the open transformer door and you could see the tracking lines from the three poles where it had shorted and each of the three experts were saying that they did not know what happened to cause the short. I looked over their shoulder and noticed a small piece of brown fur about the size of your thumb nail on the floor. I told them that the fur was from a bat and it caused the short. We nicknamed the animal the ( Bat out of Hell ) As close as you can get I assume.

The worst critter problem I've ever experienced was working on a gold claim in Dawson City,YT. For whatever reason bears used to rip out and destroy/eat the seats on ALL the heavy equipment. It didn't happen to me but a buddy hopped up on an 11-N Hi-Drive early in the morning. A young Grizz was in the cab, having broken in on the opposite side. Both suprised the other and it was a race to see who could bail first.....

great story... that paints a lovely picture
Del

A tale of revenge.

One of my neighbours was driven mad in his last house by the squirrels digging up his fine compost raised beds to bury nuts. Worse, they were off his hazel trees.

So having 'acquired' a small number of supermarket baskets he buried them under compost in a particularly tempting raised bed. A few weeks later he pulled up the baskets and took the nuts inside to wash. Thank you Mr. Squirrel, at last a use for the little gits.

Well, talking about cats and critter mayhem, this is a question of who was the trouble maker.

My twin sister had a cat when we were growing up, cat did everything with her, followed her to the school bus, and greeted her when we returned, cat followed her everywhere.

I was about 8-9 years old at the time, and on the farm, we found our own entertainment......usually at someone's else's expense. We had a gravel pit, that filled with water, we ride horses and take them swimming down there or just walked there and played. Well we walked that day and her cat followed her down there as usual, and then the teasing started. I threatened to throw her cat in......to see if he could swim.

after enough teasing, she didn't think I would do it, and she dared me........so, I did, he went about 30 feet, right in the middle of the pond. My sister scream so loud, I knew I went too far. Well, to my relief the cat's head bobbed up, and strangely enough it started to swim to me.

While my sister was wailing, and pouted that the banks were too high that 'Big Red' would need some help. I, like a dumb kid carring heavy guilt, grab hold of a branch with one hand, so I could grab the cat with the other. Before I knew it, that dam cat was half way up my arm, and all the flailing I did, he stuck to my arm like industrial grade velcro.

The sight 'Big Red' and I presented her, my sister laughed so hard, she couldn't even stand, when the cat finally released himself from me. My flannel shirt sleeve was in tatters........ and my arm in no better shape

Of course she ran home to give her side of the story. dumb cat...

He must have been one ticked off kitty!

if anyone asks........yes........cats CAN swim.

One cold December morn, my beloved and our youngest paid a visit to the pediatrician due to yet another case of strep throat. On the way out of the Dr's office there was a small "tuxedo" kitten, probably not more than 4 or 5 months old, sitting there shivering in the cold making the oddest noises and when my wife looked down she noted that the poor things tail was dangling by a tag of dessicated and hairless skin about an inch or so from it's butt and the tail was mummified, and the stump was nasty and infected. We surmised that it had curled up under the hood of a car to keep warm and it's tail got caught in a fan belt and was almost, but not quite amputated probably a week or so earlier. I receive a call from her telling me about this poor maimed kitty and I cut her off and told her to go back and get the poor thing because I knew I'd never hear the end of it if she didn't. she replied that she was glad I felt that way because she already had. Poor thing is "speech" impaired, it cannot properly show it's disgust at anything without the ability to flip it's tail... and it took forever for it to learn to meow properly as well...

oh, no......... on the farm we had a tailless, one earred, 3 legged cat named "Squish".

^{Sounds like something from De. Suess}

My sister used to have a stray cat with 3 legs and no tail, probably a result of getting zapped by a fan belt.

Naturally, it's name was "Tripod".

"Tripod". ^{hey that was my nickname.......}

Back to the cat......This one, trouble followed him around.........he was actually kinda an inspiration of perseverance and positive attitude........

I believe he lost his leg, I had spotting him, pawing at the large transmission drive pulley of the barn cleaner as it went around.

How the cat got his name was one time, The cows during a lightning storm panicked and tore off a large barn door. as it laid on the ground and the cows walked across it, it made a quack sound like a duck. I was curious and I stood on it, and jumped up and down, sure enough it went quack, quack , quack. Curious I lifted it up, out ran the cat, It was about 6 months old and still didn't have a name, and that's how it got labeled.

Visitors would remark how quick and active he was. He was quite entertaining. We told them, it's because of his efficient design and they were very surprise to find out what we meant by the cats lack of body parts. Not much of a jumper because of his lack of a tail, but he could scale a cement wall with only 3 legs.

Yes, quite an inspiration.

Phoenix, thanks for sharing the great story about "Squish"! LOL That was one damn amazing cat alright!!!

During my teen years I use to work summers on my Great Uncles dairy farm. I use to see a whole bunch of "barn cats" there that were missing all sorts of body parts. there was this one particular "wounded" cat (missing rear leg and part of a tail) I use to watch from time to time that would enter the pen were the bulls were kept. That crazy cat would leap up and claw his way on one of the bull's hind legs. Of course the bull freaked out by bucking trying to shake off the hitch hiker.....the cat would go a flying! hehehe

I always wondered how that cat got handicapped. Possibly he climbed aboard a bull too many times? It's plausible, but really I dunno.

I'm sure some of the cats there on the farm were wounded by the dairy cows or somehow got caught in the machinery....

My Great Uncle and Great Aunt never let them into the house, and they didn't paid much attention to them either. To them, they served a vital service by keeping the rat and mice populations at bay, that's all. None were considered pets, like their dogs, and even they too weren't allowed into the house!

Most farm cats lost feet and legs from being in the tall grass looking for mice when the hay mower came by. Works as well on groundhogs that are too slow. I always felt bad for them but the farm is a dangerous place for both animals and humans.

Roy, I saw that too many times with groundhogs when we were harvesting hay and corn. Some got catapulted it seemed.

My four sicko, demented, and much older cousins (my mom's 1st cousins) would be singing out: "ohhhhm thems greesy grimmie gopher guts....." at the top of their lungs every time a chuck got whacked by a thrasher or combine. Actually it was pretty funny how they carried on, and they were dead sober too! Ya should have seen 'em when the corn whiskey was broken out in the evening after dinner...

Naturally this being a dairy farm, we'd hunt chucks out in the fields whenever we had spare time w/ scoped .306 hunting rifles. There's nothing worse on a dairy farm to have a healthy dairy cow fall into a chuck hole and break a leg, which usually meant that that cow was to become that evenings' dinner hamburger in very short order.

I tell ya, when a .306 FMJ round hits a chuck there ain't much left, except some itty bitty scraps for the crows and foxes to nibble on.