No More Mice!

I have now been rodent-free for almost a week. And it's soooo great. I can cook and not have to worry about the rodents having marched all over my cookie sheets before me. I can leave dishes in the drainer to dry, like normal people do. I can wake up in the morning, walk into my kitchen, and not see rodent turds scattered everywhere.

It's so great.

In celebration, I have purchased a small brown stuffed mouse from IKEA, which either my daughter or my dog is giving me for Christmas. (Originally I was trying to convince my daughter to give it to me. But she doesn't want to. She's okay with wrapping it, but would rather that the present were from the dog. Okay, fine.)

I figure I can always use it as a little vodoo mouse if they come back.

Rodent Update

Round XXIVICIVIXIII of the mouse infestation, and the rodents are winning. By a lot. So here's what we've got so far:
1) Wooden traps with peanut butter
2) Wooden traps with peanut butter and sesame seeds (to give them something to nibble on, keep them there long enough to get smacked)
3) Poison bait
4) Glue traps
5) Exterminator (who apprently seems to only have left a different kind of bait. Is it a different flavor? I don't know. So, the mice ignored it for a few days, and then made off with it. But did not die from exposure, because a week later, they were still there, but the bait was gone.)
6) Wooden traps with smashed up bits of dog biscuit (they really seem to like these things, having bitten a hole in the bag and dragged an entire dog biscuit behind the oven, just to leave it there)
7) Another exterminator visit, more of bait type #2. So far the bait is still there, and so are the mice. The more cleaning I do, the more mouse scat I find. I mean, it's on the window sill in my bedroom. But that's the only place in my bedroom that I can find it. Not the floor, the closet (which has been thoroughly cleaned due to pending holiday), the dresser, under the bed, behind the bookshelf, under the dresser/desk, etc. Also, I live on the second floor. Of a brick apartment building. So, do these mice have rapelling equipment that they have used to infiltrate my particular apartment? Also, how did they get in through my window without it being open? Or, did they come in through the central heat/AC ducts in the ceiling (again: rapelling equipment). And: Who is making mouse-size rapelling equipment?! Someone should really look into that, because I wouldn't think there would be much of a market.

So now I'm really looking into option W: rent-a-cat (or borrow, really). Several of my co-workers have offered to let me borrow their cats' for a week. This saves me the trouble of getting one myself (my dog chases cats, which raises an initial problem with the borrow-a-cat for a week situation. But I could find someone to watch him for a week. Especially if it solves the rodent issue. But the more pressing matter of getting my own cat, besides the constant dog-chasing-cat cacophany that I would not want to deal with, is the pet care and maintenance required when one actually owns the cat. On top of already owning a dog. In an apartment). This solution makes the most sense to me, in the biological area. It's the biological solution. No need for nasty traps that you can get your fingers stuck in, or that fly across the kitchen as you are trying to set them, spraying peanut butter and dog biscuits everywhere. No need for glue traps that your kids constantly want to play with. No need for rodent poison that you're worried the dog may eat. It's a biological solution. I see an open market waiting to be tapped: rent-a-cat. Seriously. I mean, apparently Japan is a bit ahead of us on this, companion-pet-wise, but I am thinking biological-control-wise. Some pest company should look into this. It would give the cat ladies of the world something a little more useful to do.

I have also learned two things about mice I thought worth sharing. First, they only eat rice cakes when all other resources have been exhausted. Secondly, no matter how hungry they are, they will not eat peeps. I guess they don't recognize them as food. I had left an open box of peeps out on the dog crate, and they just didn't go for them. Even when I tried to use them to lure them to the glue traps. I wonder if that should tell us something. I wonder if you could even train a mouse to want to eat a peep. Or if that would be considered animal cruelty. Hmmmm.

Anyway, if you've got a cat you'd like to lend me, let me know.

Mix Lists

I've been inspired, so here are my mix lists, after quite some time of thought. Well, not so much with Chickie's. Mostly they are songs on my cds that she likes listening to. But my list is for any guy out there who is thinking of writing a me a love song someday (Chris Martin, are you reading this?). Mush all these songs together and make something beautiful out of them please.

Chickie Mix
1. Mocean Worker – Chick A Boom Boom
2. T.A.T.U. – Malchik Gei (AKA “My Chickie”)
3. Mike Doughty – Put It Down
4. Ting Tings – Great DJ
5. Ozomatli – Love and Hope
6. Cat Empire – Fishies
7. Mike Doughty – More Bacon than the Pan Can Handle
8. Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name
9. Ozomatli – Saturday Night

If Someone Wanted to Write Me a Love Song…
1. Cat Empire – Lullaby
2. Rocco deLuca – Colorful
3. Coldplay – Yellow
4. Savage Garden – Truly Madly Deeply
5. Killers – Read My Mind
6. Mike Doughty – Wednesday (No se Apoye)
7. Five O’Clock People – Sorry
8. Block Party – Sunday
9. Rilo Kiley – I Never
10. Coldplay – Strawberry Swing
11. Snow Patrol – Hands Open
12. New Pornographers – Adventures in Solitude

Elefun with a 4-year-old

So if you got that title, you either have kids or play with them regularly. As many of us are aware, small children are very literal people. When I asked my daughter what she wanted to get Toby (our Corgi) for Christmas, she immediately answered, as if she had been considering this for months and months and was only waiting for someone to ask her, "Reindeer antlers and a sweater."

My immediate response, upon imagining the poor animal in a sweater (I am against dressing up non-stuffed animals. Period), was to tell her, "We can't put Toby in a sweater."

"Oh, that's ok. We can get him a vest."

So, while I'm impressed at her knowledge of fashion (I mean, who wears vests these days?), I realize that she is taking me literally, and that I am still left to explain that we are not putting any clothes on the dog. Reindeer antlers being the exception. Also, he is allowed to eat them afterwards, should he so choose.

So, using this to my advantage, I have convinced my daughter that there are elephants living upstairs. As you may have guessed, the people up there are a little noisy. She, being nosy, is always wanting to know what every single noise is. So, one night I just told her that they had let their elephants out to exercise. And then she wanted to know how many they had, and what they were doing, etc.

So this is what we have speculated:
1) They have somewhere between 2 and 16 elephants.
2) Their kitchen is located over our bathroom.
3) Elephants need a lot of exercise.
4) Elephants eat grass. Maybe.

Yesterday morning, as we were eating breakfast, she asked me if maybe, possibly, there actually were not elephants up there. I asked why she thought that. And she said that we hadn't heard any "rooing" sounds coming from their trunks. (Pretty good logic for a 4-year-old). So, I applauded her reasoning skills. Then I also gave her some more information, since I happen to know a little about this.

Elephants can make noises so low that people can't actually hear them. We didn't know they were making these noises until we recorded them, sped up the recordings, and then listened to them.

Elephants also communicate with their feet. This is usually used for long-distance communication. They 'stamp' and those receiving the signals have special mechanoreceptors (Pacinian corpuscles) in their feet which allow them to receive the signals. This has been especially studied in the Asian elephants (Elephas maximus).

She actually seemed to absorb most of what I was saying about the elephant communication. And now we're back to figuring out how many elephants there are upstairs. I just hope she doesn't decide to try to invite them over some night to visit.

The Rodent Revolution will Not be Televised

or will it?



I believe that I have warned before about the coming Rodentia Revolution. We have done so many experiments on those animals (just type in "rodent" in Google scholar and see what you get). Here is a sample:

Leptin levels in human and rodent: Measurement of plasma leptin and ob RNA in obese and weight-reduced subjects

Evidence for higher rates of nucleotide substitution in rodents than in man

Too many rodent carcinogens: mitogenesis increases mutagenesis

And that was just the first page.

It seems that they may be starting their revolution in my kitchen. A few weeks ago (four) I noticed their little turds on my counter one morning. And found that they were inhabiting under my kitchen sink. So I did what any sane person would do - I cleaned every available counter space, cleaning anything they could have possibly touched, and put mouse traps under the sink with peanut butter on them. That night I caught one - and only one - mouse.

Apparently that was the stupid one.

Since then, I have resorted to
1) More traps.
2) More peanut butter. (They have been eating the p.b. off the traps. Keep in mind, I can barely put these traps in there, because the mere movement of putting the trap down sets them off. I am beginning to think that these rodents have the ability to levitate).
3) Poison.
4) Glue traps.
5) All of the above.

So far, all I have gotten is less peanut butter and more turds. This is very frustrating on my part. Apparently, they have evolved the ability to thwart mouse traps (plural! They poop next to the traps) and also the ability to annoy me into cursing. Also, they are obviously inviting friends over for parties on top of (and I said on top of) my dog's crate (which is large enough that I can fit into it. Now how do they get on top of it? By climbing up the wall with their suction cup feet?).

Are these X-men-type mice I'm dealing with? Maybe I need a video camera.

But be warned you rodents. The exterminator comes Friday. Then we shall see who wins.

Excavation

Recently, archaeologists found a ~1,800-year-old bronze-coated chariot in a Thracian tomb in Bulgaria. The chariot is painted with figures from Thracian mythology, including a jumping panther and an animal that contains a panther's body and a dolphin's tail. Horse remains were located near the chariot. Incidentally, I know nothing about the Thracians, but the article mentions that, "Thracians were an Indo-European nomadic people who settled in the central Balkans around 5,000 years ago." (Toshkov 2008). Wikipedia also provides some information on Thracians and references, for some quick information. Numerous archaeological digs have discovered tombs from these people; however, looters often find the tombs before scientists, and leave little behind.

A few months ago I went to the Maryland Science Center with my daughter and some friends. Their "feature" exhibit is "Dinosaur Mysteries," which is aimed towards children, in which one is allowed to excavate dinosaurs, create your own dinosaur (and email it to someone), pretend to be a baby dinosaur in a nest, put together dinosaur bones in a large 'puzzle', etc. The dinosaur excavation was reminiscent of a child's sandbox, with volunteers covering 'bones' (plastic molded bones in a pre-formed area) with sand, and the children uncovering them with large brushes. You could do it as many times as you wanted, and they would continue to re-cover it with sand as many times as you wanted. I guess there's always the really small children who still don't recognize that a toy still exists if you can't see it under the blanket (and are so happy when it comes out from under that blanket). I forget the scientific name for that though.

I also took a class once on 'Art of the Ancient Americas' during my undergraduate. One of our activities was to conduct a mock archaeological dig. This is tedious work. From what I remember, we had to first find an area of likely 'remains,' mark it off, and then 'dig' very slowly and tediously. Any finds were then excavated at toothbrush speed, with tools that much resembled toothbrushes. It is not surprising that looters often raid areas before scientists, but it is sad. It is surprising that, in this age of high-tech, high-speed, get-back-to-me-on-your-fax-mobile-blackberry-car phone-email we have not found faster means to uncover these relics than slow manual labor. I guess there's just not a market for that? It is unfortunate that mankind may be losing historical artifacts and genealogical data (especially in an age when we have so much scientific analysis available to us) due to simple theft. Maybe one day it will matter more. But then will it be too late?

Review of Smashing Pumpkins Concert

The week of Halloween, I won tickets to go see the Smashing Pumpkins in concert at Constitution Hall in DC. The concert was on Veterans Day, 11/11/08 (they played two shows down there, so if you by some chance saw the other one, which may have been different, maybe what I’m going to say doesn’t apply). Let me just say right off that I’m not a huge fan of the Pumpkins. I have respect for them as musicians, which is why I am willing to see them. But I hate Billy Corgan’s voice, which is why I will never actually pay to go see them. My free seats were pretty good. I was on the floor, but not so far back that I couldn’t see the stage, and not so close that I was wishing I wasn’t.

So we all know that the man is weird. He started the show wearing something that made me think he was trying to be an Egyptian. This long white skirt thing (which he wore for the rest of the concert as far as I could tell) and a gold sun headdress. The thing had to be the size of my 30-lb Corgi, and heavy. He wore it for a few songs, and then took it off. I imagine it’s hard to headbang with something like that on. But when he did take it off, he reminded me a bit of Moby. A little bigger version of Moby. Skinny and bald. I really did expect him to be bigger than that.

The sound was done very well. You could hear each instrument. And it wasn’t all guitars and drums either. There was a trumpet, a trombone, and a flute player. And the flute player was hot. Also, he held the flute like people were going to make fun of him for playing it (I think there may be some issues he has to work out there, but hey, he can do it, he made it this far). The drummer was also hot, but he was usually behind the huge drum kit (which, incidentally, was very well micced. I would love to know what kind and how they used their microphones on that puppy). He came out a few times from behind it – to play the tambourine – and also, apparently, to show off his muscley arms.

The lights – not so much. They seemed to have been prepared for a much larger, maybe outdoors-type, facility. The lights were loud, bright, and colorful. But also, there was this repetitive, colorful, strobe-light-the-audience effect that I did not appreciate. A lot of the time I had to keep my eyes shut to prevent a migraine; I can only imagine if I were prone to seizures what could have happened. It was nice though, that there was no smoke machine. As a person with asthma, those things can cause me to have to actually leave.

The musicians were all very good (BC’s voice notwithstanding). I have learned to live with the voice. And he didn’t sing the whole time. Sometimes he actually played for 10 straight minutes - and you thought this is nice - and then he would sing again. What was strange to me though, because I have never, ever, experienced this before in any concert that I’ve been to, is that he played for the first hour and a half. I mean played. No talking, no break, just played. It was like a feat of stamina. I don’t even know if he took a break for water (which he definitely did afterwards). It was weird. There were the people in the audience, those people who annoy the crap out of me, that act like they are the only ones at the show, who know every line to every song, and dance and jump, and pump their fist like they are the only ones there (that’s what mosh pits are for people!). And after 1.5 hours of music, BC was still hopping around stage, and they were tired. That was cool to see, but other than that it was just plain weird.

After the 1.5 hours there was a few minute intermission (water break) and something I can only assume was vocal/mouth exercises. BC was 1)beatboxing and 2)making the popping sound that you practice as a teenager to impress your friends, only he did it up on stage in front of everyone. And then he passed it off as a song he made up, right there on the spot, just for us. Which just goes to show you that he is just as weird in a normal way as the rest of us, but not afraid to share the normal weirdness either. Which I find reassuring.

But what followed that was this ten minute screechy-screechy thing (evolution? Is that one of their songs?) that was so awful I about left in the middle of it. When they were done angsting, things softened out and I was glad that I had stayed. I do appreciate the range of their musical ability. I mean, the fact that they can get up there and do what they do, and have that many people pay them for it has to say something.

And now, I have to confess that I only lasted for 2 hours. I have no idea how long the concert went. But they’re job is to be up there on that stage, and I got there for free, so I feel like I got what I paid for. I am glad that I went to see them. And although I may never love the Pumpkins, I can appreciate them and I definitely respect them as musicians.