April showers bring…
out the shrews!
The remodeling and minor additions I made to my house last summer (egress windows for rooms in the basement) have inadvertently drawn nightly unwanted squatters to my property. I still haven’t figured out how to completely evict them. I wish I could persuade an owl to move into the pines in the back yard. Meanwhile, they fall into the window wells and scratch, scratch, shuffle, scratch, scratch in the rocks right outside my window - always just after I have phased in and out of my first cycle of much needed REM. Last year, between August and first snow, I think we eradicated 11 or 14 or 18. I don’t remember and I didn’t write it down, but it was over 11 - one dark, sleep deprived night at a time. But this year I will keep a running total in my column to the right.
My 11 yr old son doesn’t always appreciate being woken up in the wee hours of the night to provide moral support and all the intestinal fortitude I can get, but I ain’t going out there on my own. For some reason, my imagination insists that a killer rabbit-like scene from the Holy Grail awaits me. But afterwards I always have this strange sense of euphoric victory.
So, how do we do the little buggers in?
Primarily, in the middle of the night or when its raining, we use Josiah’s homemade dandy:
If necessary, we apply this:
Or, if it’s daytime and not raining, we simply use this:
So tonight, #1 of Summer 2005 met his demise at approximately 1:28am:
And now that the adrenaline is flowing and it’s only 2:26am, I think I will tackle those 420 waiting papers…
April 13th, 2005 at 12:41 pm
How about trying to get some realistic looking coiled rubber snakes and placing them near the egress windows? Perhaps we could make a simple angled frame out of light weight 1x2’s and cover it with chicken wire and set them over the above ground egress openings. They would be light and movable so they wouldn’t block the exit if (God forbid) you ever needed to use them. You ought to ask what Tim Buelow does (who apparently has had an ark full of critters fall into their basement window) to keep them out.
By the way, I never want to see another picture of a dead shrew for as long as I live.
April 13th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
GROSS! Gross, Gross, Gross! Do you really stab them with that thing? How can you stand to do that? Blood and guts? What if you put a screen on top? Isn’t there an herb of some sort that they can’t stand that you can put out that won’t kill the cats? Patsy! I can’t believe you stab them with that thing!!! And then bang the heck out of them? As far as I know we didn’t have shrews in Texas…maybe I don’t know how awful they are…do they bite?
April 13th, 2005 at 8:26 pm
Shrews are mean and they stink. The cats won’t go near them. They have razor sharp claws and teeth. At 1 or 2 in the morning, its either them or me and I’m not sharing my bedroom with them. I just stab the crap out of it and Josiah fishes it out of the well in the morning.
April 14th, 2005 at 11:27 pm
um…what are shrews?
Also. I’ve unfortunately had to change Blogger so that only registered users can comment. If you’ve noticed, I’ve had some problems with hate mail… :-/ Some anonymous yahoo was saying some not so nice things about me…sorry for the inconvenience!
April 14th, 2005 at 11:41 pm
That dead thing in the last picture… They’re rodents of some sort - they’d be cute if they weren’t so mean. But they’re completely blind - so John’s snake idea won’t help. I heard that fox pee will help, but it will get rained away or just wear off (and who knows what the cats and the dogs next door will do) and I don’t want to mess with filling up little vials of fox pee on a weekly basis. In Brian Jacques books (Redwall series) they are called guerilla shrews - constantly yapping, never clearly listening, and turning on and beating the crap out of each other whenever anyone disagrees.
Speaking of beating up those who disagree - The big comments section let me post on your site. I gave Anonymous a little what ‘fer for ya.
April 15th, 2005 at 10:38 am
You’re the greatest. That had me pretty upset.
April 15th, 2005 at 10:41 am
AND…your comments are right on.
Thanks a bundle.
April 18th, 2005 at 12:38 am
Yeeesh! This is a side of Patsy I have never really known. I had heard of your shrew hunts, but wow…you actually kill them. You go girl!
Ok, here’s my idea. Clean out everybody’s hairbrush in the house (or borrow some from the haircut place–they must have extras)and brush that enormous cat of yours too! Put all the hair in the rocks by where they go. They will be afraid of the human (and cat) smell. And you and your cat won’t have to do a single thing except put your little hairballs here and there for them to smell and be afraid of. This worked for my hostas. My garden looked a bit hairy at first, but the rabbits and squirrels quit bothering my stuff! I’ll bring you some of my dog’s nasty hair if you want. If that doesn’t get them…then those little shrews are probably a lot smarter than we think they are. I’m gonna have nightmares tonight!
April 19th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
One question everyone is failing to ask regarding shrews: Are they good eatin’?
April 23rd, 2005 at 5:24 pm
Not anymore, John. We’re going vegan.