2010

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10

The only reason I'm writing anything now is that I dreamt about Jessica Biel last night, and just found out she's going to be on David Letterman at 11:35, so rather than go to bed ninety minutes ago, I'm staying up. In the meantime, I'll tell you about all the rats I've been catching from underneath my landlord's house.

Notice how clever it is for me to call it underneath my landlord's house, rather than underneath my house! It places the burden of a rodent infestation exactly where it belongs! After some two weeks of this activity, I'll tell you what I've learned: The rats are coming from a clump of black dirt refreshed after each rain storm and clawed from underneath the fence barricading the rest of us from my neighbor's back yard. The rats are so happy coming over here, to my landlord's house, they're procreating. Killing a rat is an iffy endeavor, because you can't make a clean kill all the time using a spring-style rat trap. There's nothing worse than seeing a rat with a broken back staggering around near your front doorstep, almost diabolically coming around for a mercy kill. I quickly evolved into being a live-animal-trap kind of guy, not so much for the rats' sake, but for mine.

I have two Havahart® Small Animal traps now, each with entirely different kinds of tripping mechanisms. The first has a simple guillotine-style open door, propped up by a curved stiff metal rod which can rotate, and whose other end is held in place by another metal rod connected to a bait dish, far back in the trap. If the bait dish is disturbed, it nudges its rod out of position, thereby releasing the other rod, the one connected to the propped-up doorway ... and Slam! ... the rat's in the trap. The second trap is slightly more complicated, with two doors, so supposedly a rat will see it's not a dead-end kind of deal and venture further toward the pivoting bait dish in the center, whose axle props up two spring-loaded slanted door pieces at once, which upon disturbance from the moving bait dish, slam down on both ends of the animal cage at once and become locked into place with metal contrivances, similar to play-yard swings, which prevent the doors from reopening once they slam shut. These fixtures are similar in concept to a door back being jammed tight underneath a doorknob, which actors pretend will keep intruders out in the movies.

Now if a foot-long rat gets its tail stuck in the trapdoor, it's all over. Its tail prevents the trapdoor from locking, the rat escapes, and will never go back into the trap no matter how you prepare its Sourdough English muffin morsel with Peanut Butter! It simply won't take the bait. However something else happens. The rat will become so terrified someone's actually trying to catch it, it will squeal terribly, wriggle its way out of the trap, and leave your premises altogether. Now that's a smart rat! After that, you begin catching smaller and smaller rodents, in some sort of pecking order, I guess, and take them down to the marshlands and release them to Mother Nature – You can imagine how that works out for them. I've taken some fourteen rats down there already, at all times of day or night, sometimes as many as four-a-day.

The teachers in the school across from my landlord's house squeal with delight when they see me toting a rat-laden trap over to my dark blue BMW, where I carefully set the cage down on an open New York Times on the floor mat behind the driver's seat for its ride to the marshlands. The children are too young to lie with their emotions, and simply gaze at the scene as it unfolds. Myself, I've become inured to the sounds of a rodent clawing and banging around inside a cage behind my back. I simply turn up the radio and give it a dose of good-old Mexican love songs.

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9:44

Last Night: (Dream) Gazing over the barricade, I see Dennis, who ducks as fast as he can. There's Jessica Biel, standing in the gondola behind him. I find a hotel out on an island, with bridges that close in the late afternoon. If I get there before the gate goes down, I'll have my room. Who cares if I can't get back to the mainland before dawn? (Fin)

Some Seven Days Ago: "// .. ./. //./ /.// /../. //. /./ /... /. /.. /. /.. / The cat's in the bag! /.. ././. .// ...// ..//. ../. //./ /..// /.. /.// ./."

"../ ././. //. // /.. //. ../ /..// .../ /..//. ./.. / Forgotten how confused I was / ... ././ /...//. .///../ //... /.,/ /./ ..// .//. /."

(Dream) When the eighteen-wheeler makes a stop, I find its contents completely malleable -- It's black gold, or something / Havi is there! -- on the inside, I find the edge of a sea, and descending down a steep underwater shelf, find various flashlights embedded in the darkening sands. (Fin)

11:08