Well, it happened again last night. Somehow, although I had locked all of the doors and the windows, they got back into the house and made a huge mess in the kitchen again. When I woke up this morning there were cereal boxes that had been ripped open and emptied, ramen noodles scattered on the floor, and as for the cookies I had just baked last night? Forget about it.
I suspect, of course, that Clementine has been letting them in. She thinks they’re cute. We all did, at first, and who could blame us? Those dark black circles around their eyes and that bushy hair that stuck straight up made them look like some sort of emo toddlers. And then, the way they would use their little hands to root through the cabinets for food was so cute that it was almost human. And, of course, there was that look they got in their eyes; sometimes, on those rare occasions when they would look straight at you, I swear you could catch a glimpse of something almost like intelligence in there.
But the fact is they’re wild animals, and they belong outside. In the long run, it does neither them or us any good to let them inside, because if one thing is certain, it’s that where they go, trouble always follows. Still, even I had to admit that they were pretty cute, and that it was with quite the heavy heart that I eventually went online to look for ways to get rid of them.
I didn’t have to look far before I found a website called Get Rid of Things dot com that sounded perfect. (Sadly, the fact that it was so easy to find the site only confirmed their status as vermin in my mind). One click later and I was reading the following advice: “Although often portrayed in movies as cute, curious, and smart as the dickens, what movies fail to show us is what an incredible pain in the ass they can be. They are quite at home in the middle of towns and cities, and because of their dexterity, they are quite adept at dumpster diving. Also, they are omnivorous, and will eat fruit, fish, meat, veggies, bugs, lo mein, jello, slim jims and just about anything else they can get their little paws on.”
The website then went on to offer the following advice for keeping them away.
1.)Protect your trash.
2.)Keep your yard clean.
3.)Make them feel unwelcome.
4.)Scare them away.
5.)Trap and relocate them.
Then the website went on to mention things like lacing the area with ammonia or predator urine, putting up scarecrows, and, as a last resort, shooting and killing them. While I thought the last few bits of advice were a little over the top, I was downright appalled at the final one. After all, as annoying as I find them to be sometimes, I still don’t think it’s legal to kill them. Even with a permit.
And then I realized that I had gone to the wrong How To Get Rid of Things page. I had thought I was on the one about teenage boys, but as it turns out, I was on the one about raccoons.
Eh. Except for the killing part, all of the advice still seemed spot on: in fact, I went back online to see if I could find a reliable source for some teenage boy predator urine. That was before I remembered that I’m already living with the perfect source: the father of a teenage girl. Now I just wonder how hard it’s going to be to convince my husband to pee into a cup.