Wednesday, April 18, 2007
I did what?
Wow, me, the king of slack and relaxation actually had to bring some work home with me last night! It was only about an hour's worth, but still... my wife was completely shocked. I blame it on the fact that in the middle of the day I had to run to a health food store and buy a bottle of 100% essential oil of peppermint. Not for its new-agey medicinal purposes, no, but for something more insidious. It supposedly repels pests, including ants and mice. Apparently these animals don't like the smell. While we're not infested with either at the moment, we did catch two mice over the winter, which was enough to investigate ways to deter them from ever entering the house. The fact that it supposedly repels ants is a bonus. (I'm using supposedly here because reviews of this method seem mixed, but with about 75% reporting success, so that was enough to lead me to try it.)
Long side story there ("Tale of the Essential Oil" by Chaucer). The work I had to do was explain changes to the back covers of some books to a graphic designer. It would have been a lot faster on the phone or if they'd ever get video-phone technology widespread. Instead, I had to write sentences like, "Second bullet, third line, change ____ to ______."
When I finished that work, I went to work with the oil and a large bag of cotton balls. I placed between 5 and 10 drops of oil on each cotton ball and placed them, well, everywhere: behind major appliances, in cabinets and closets, in the crawl space, outside under the front porch, in the garage, in the attic. Our house smells minty fresh, with no danger to the pets. Even if we didn't have pets, we wouldn't use poison. Think about it: a small mouse eats poison, then returns to where it's nesting (in the wall, for instance). The mouse dies. Um, there's now a dead mouse rotting in your wall. Gross!
I finished all those chore-type things in time for dinner out and got home in time to catch House, in which they tried to figure out why a six-year-old girl got her period.
That was Tuesday.
Long side story there ("Tale of the Essential Oil" by Chaucer). The work I had to do was explain changes to the back covers of some books to a graphic designer. It would have been a lot faster on the phone or if they'd ever get video-phone technology widespread. Instead, I had to write sentences like, "Second bullet, third line, change ____ to ______."
When I finished that work, I went to work with the oil and a large bag of cotton balls. I placed between 5 and 10 drops of oil on each cotton ball and placed them, well, everywhere: behind major appliances, in cabinets and closets, in the crawl space, outside under the front porch, in the garage, in the attic. Our house smells minty fresh, with no danger to the pets. Even if we didn't have pets, we wouldn't use poison. Think about it: a small mouse eats poison, then returns to where it's nesting (in the wall, for instance). The mouse dies. Um, there's now a dead mouse rotting in your wall. Gross!
I finished all those chore-type things in time for dinner out and got home in time to catch House, in which they tried to figure out why a six-year-old girl got her period.
That was Tuesday.
# posted by smacky @ 9:28 AM 
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Dead mice. Ugh. I live on the ground floor of an apartment complex, and the mice always get into the apartments. I found a dead one a few weeks ago, and I have never sensed such a stench in my life.
Peppermint? Check.
Peppermint? Check.
We're currently dealing with the decomposing mouse problem. Tori the Cat managed to kill one literally between the basement ceiling and the ground floor. There's no way to find the thing without a lot of damage. We've been spraying a lot of Lysol to mask the smell a bit.
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