I got up, headed towards the bathroom just as two boy cats came running towards me screaming their heads off. Golly. I had just watched that stupid Cloverfield movie last night – you know, the slightly re-jiggled Blair Witch meets 28 Days Later meets Alien meets Friends movie, so that was still on my mind. Had some sort of alien creature invaded my bathroom and freaked out my boy cats?
Well, yes, yes it had.
As the boys cowered over in the corner I turned on the light and I saw it. I screamed too and the boys nodded. This giant ass centipede was crawling along the floor in my bathroom. My beautiful girl cat Hyka was lounging on the floor playing with it. It was one ugly & mean looking centipede.
Hyka looked up and meowed happily as she slammed her paw down on its head. I got some toilet paper, squished the rest of the damn thing and flushed it down the toilet. When in the hell did I start living in some third world tropical Onion House hell hole? I am against wildlife in general, but even more so when it crawls up my drain.
This is not my first encounter with the wildlife in recent days. No, just a few days ago I was driving over to Mark’s house (instead of walking the two blocks... lest I encounter coyotes) when I saw this turtle crossing the road……..There is no punch line here. This turtle was crossing the road. As you might expect he was not walking very fast so I turned my car around to go help him out so that he would not get run over. As I came back I saw this annoying white woman in a Volvo staring at the turtle from her car, her hand over her mouth as she tried to stifle a scream. She was obviously concerned that the turtle would get hit but she did not bother to stop. I hate white women in Volvos.
Anyway, I parked my car, got out, and walked over to the turtle. I explained that I was going to pick him up and carry him to the grass on the other side of the road. He tucked his little head and legs into his shell as if to say, “OK, I’m ready.” As soon as I picked him up he squirted out turtle poop all over the road. Rude.
I sat him down in the grass and he high tailed it over to the bushes. Funny how they can move fast when motivated.
I am not done with this wildlife story yet. A few months ago I was sitting at my desk upstairs. I have a good view of the alley behind my house. I looked up just in time to see this raccoon walking down the alley. He was standing on his hind feet, walking upright like a person. He had a quick, forceful gate – clearly he had a purpose and needed to be somewhere soon. No one believes me about this, but it is true.
So now the real current drama. A couple of days ago my neighbor Binh came over and was banging on my front door. Binh is the very buff, very athletic guy from Thailand. I was upstairs taking a bath. He kept banging and banging on the door so finally I opened the bathroom window and I’m like “God! What?!!” He was clearly freaked out. Out of breath he said “I just saw a rat in my backyard! You have to do something!” I look around to see if I am being filmed for some kind of reality TV show. I so hope there is no camera in my bathroom. In my head I am thinking, “You saw a rat in your backyard and I have to do something? Grow some balls, straight boy! Instead I say, “Um…OK. Let me get dried off and I will come over in a while.”
So in a bit I go over. I knock on his back door. No one answers for a while then he opens it a little bit. “Dude, I really hate rats. I am traumatized. I am afraid it might get in.” I am thinking "Oh for Christ’s sake! It’s not like it was a spider or something!" You may recall the spider on my eye incident from last year:
He rambles on incoherently for a while and finally I say that I have to go but he can call me if he sees another one.
About an hour later I heard this scream from my back window, “Troy, help!” He’s standing on a plastic cooler in his yard pointing at the bushes. His wife and kids are cowering in his kitchen looking out the window. I turn on my hose and spray water at a bush for a second. This seems to calm him down and he goes back inside. A few hours later I heard him back outside. Now he has purchased several plastic snakes, "They hate them!", and rat traps that he has loaded up with peanut butter, "They like peanut butter way better than cheese, the vermin!".
At this point I resist the temptation to explain to Binh that my first apartment in Seattle was in the basement of this old house in the University District. I used to wake up in the morning with rat shit in my bed, meaning they had been crawling on me in my sleep. I guess this should have bothered me, but in the grand scheme of things I was really more focused on the fact that I was living on my own in Seattle! What difference did a little rat poop make? It turned out they were living in my gas stove. The pilot light kept them warm. This went on for a couple days until I casually mentioned this to my mother. She was at my house in 3 hours, packed up my stuff, and paid the deposit on a new place the same day.
Yes, it’s best that I don’t recount this experience I think. Every time Binh tells me about his rat phobia I just burst out laughing, half assuming he is kidding and making this up. He is not kidding, not making it up, and really not enjoying my laughter. The next day there is an email to our neighborhood email distribution list stating that his family is devastated and traumatized and that we have to all band together with torches and pitchforks. Then I see him standing on his back porch. He is surrounded by several plastic snakes, an electronic device that emits a high pitch noise that rats don’t enjoy, and several neighborhood kids. He is handing cash to the kids. He explains to me that his rat traps caught several rats. He paid the kids to put the rats into plastic bags and to then dump them in their own garbage cans.
At this point tell him I am really not OK with the rat traps as he could hurt a cat. He angrily says he has not seen any cats recently. I explain that is probably because he has killed them all with his little rat traps and that if we would take a more feline friendly approach to this situation nature might just take care of itself. He slams the door saying that cats don’t even like peanut butter.
The next day everyone in the neighborhood gets an email titled “Those little black boxes in your yard.” Binh has hired an exterminator to come out and place cat friendly rat motels in everyone’s back yard. Rats go in but they don’t come out. I reply back to him asking if he wants some cash for this. To his credit his rather funny response to me is, “No I do not need money for this. The exterminator will come out and check the traps every few days and take away any rats. Unless you are a Republican. Then you have to pay for this and remove your own dead rats.”
OK, that was just so damn funny that I actually kind of like him again.
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