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Little Victories

I had no idea when I went to see it how much

this movie would direct the forces in my life.

Longtime readers may recall that Fat Cat, having used up all nine lives, shuffled off her feline coil last Thanksgiving. So, as sure as God makes little green apples, a couple of weeks afterwards, the landlord decided to upgrade plumbing hereabouts.

Goofus #1 and Goofus #2 employed to do the job were earnest, if not very bright, plumbers, and they managed to get the digs' piping upgraded, and with only three tries, finally sweated the final fitting right, and stopped the leak they created.

Buuuuuut...they left gaping holes in the sheetrock where they dropped new lines to replace the old copper tubing. Way up in the attic space, but still...

Consequently, there lately was newly heard a rustling and bustling up thataways, where normally only old boxes sit, and the only residents are dust bunnies and ghost turds.

Until last month.

I know this, because old potato chip bags that fall behind the trash bin do not, as a rule, chew themselves to small ribbons.

Then there was a regular rustling behind piles of piles around the manor.

Rodents in the wire! Set off the claymores!

Knowing that I have, when there's a local heatwave, propped open the front door to capture a breeze now and again, I was afraid that, like one brief incident decades hence, I might have inadvertently invited Mssr. Rat in to set up residence.

That was bad enough.  Having no desire to share space and have to deal with Kung Flu and plague-carrying rabid sewer rats, I began removing possible hiding places from among the piles of grown-up toys, ammunition for same, books, and other research material in the various corners of the lair. But a couple of weeks later, as I whittled down the available hiding spaces, imagine my shocked surprise when, instead of some monstrous Norwegian Brown Sewer Rat, my late night visit to the loo revealed a couple of field mice, in flagrante delicto.
The brazen rodentious bastards.

And, in what quickly became apparent, they had obviously brought their relatives and relations.
Such that
1) containment measures that would suffice for Mssr. Rat would not work on an animal that can get through a dime-sized knothole, and
2) They had already escaped containment, and decamped to the four corners of my fiefdom.
3) Which, thanks to the gorram Kung Flu, is now awash in potential mouse food, much of it so new I haven't had time to decant it into mouseproof sealed metal cans and food-grade buckets yet. And which, if they get into it, will beget a never-ending sh*tstorm of well-fed mice.

F**k that very much, thanks.

They sure as hell aren't getting any of my chow, no effing way.
Having some wee experience with the little rodentious bastards, and the campaign awards to prove it, I hie myself to Orange Box, and grab a package of Mk. I Traps, Mouse, (4)@. And, Callooh! Callay! Sam's Club gifted me a few months back with a free tasty retort packet of honey-peanut butter.

I bait my trap line, and set the ambush.

I have thus been greeted by a steadily increasing bodycount this week, until this morning, on arising, the last rodentious p.o.s. was found dispatched.
O frabjous day! 
I have since patched the holes in the sheetrock, on my side and the neighbor's side of the wall, so they won't be getting in again. Other than animals I've brought home, the biggest problem I've had were ants and the occasional spider.

But seriously, them getting in just after the lifelong unemployed cat, who would have made sport of them, had permanently departed, and just at the beginning of a pandemic where stored food could be kind of a big thing? WTAF?!? What are the odds of that?
I was looking for the hidden camera, I swear.

"Nine godless communist thieving mice dispatched, all weapons functional,  local patrols report no enemy within the AO. All enemy buried at sea via indoor plumbing. Area all secured."

And a moral to the story:
The little things and minor details, no matter how implausible, can always make any disaster go from bad to worse, just when you least expect it.
Like I needed reminding that Murphy is a right bastard.

The Early Years

h/t Kenny

She's gonna get her letter in the first draft.
Heaven help you all when she learns how to control flying monkeys.

SHTF Larder: Lessons Learned

For a number of reasons, it was time to spend a month and eat out of the grocery store in the pantry. I wanted to see how well I'd planned.
In no particular order:

1. The canned meats from Costco were the bomb, albeit bland.
For personal preference, the beef improves greatly with a bit of Worcestershire sauce.
The chicken loves teriyaki. YMMV.
I overbought them: one can, it turns out, is enough meat for two meals, or two people, not one, as I planned. Compared to my planning amounts, I was long on both.
2. Some decades after a year's time on the open-air prison that was Okinawa (where logistics and notable lack of creativity from the mess deck led to a 365-day rice-at-every-meal diet) I have gotten over my distaste for that food. Cooked properly, it makes a nice meal adjunct.
3. Beans are your friend too. Black as well as regular baked.
4. DAK hams, and the Hormel catfood cans of smoked ham are great; a Hormel whole smoked ham in a can is a non-stop 7-day feast! (Esp. if you remember to include yams, cranberry sauce, olives, pineapple slices, etc. I did.)
5. I underplanned both veggies and fruit, esp. the later. But once again, even the individual cans are a double serving.
6. Words cannot describe how much Gatorade, lemonade mix, and Tang turn drinking water into a joy rather than a chore. I'd never had Tang, successfully avoiding the Apollo-era craze in the day, but I'm here to tell you, short of having oranges, it's pretty dang close. Mixing the stuff in a 7-glass OJ plastic jug is also hella easy, and helps to fool the brain: it looks like OJ, it smells like OJ, and it tastes like OJ. I'm sure Kool-Aid packets would be just as welcome. Nestlé's cocoa is also never a bad thing. And most of it keeps damned near forever. Seal it airtight, as the unsealed cardboard canisters for bulk drink mixes eventually suck in moisture, and over time turn the dry powder to a rock that must be chiseled to measure and use.
7. Dinty Moore beef stew isn't bad. Neither is Chef Boyardee ravioli or lasagna. The spaghetti is tolerable. Vienna sausages taste like $#!^, with $#!^ sauce.
8. A well-made PBJ is still a lunch, just as it was in grade school. Ditto for tuna.
9. Condiments, condiments, condiments. You need mayo for tuna salad; threw in a blob of some Dijon mustard too, and the result was better than expected. Already mentioned Worcestershire and teriyaki sauce. Salt & pepper. Brown sugar definitely helps canned ham. So does honey, in jars, or even bulk-bought restaurant packets. Dijon and regular mustard help with ham slices, sardines, etc. Tartar sauce made a can of salmon I had included for the helluvit into a pure delight. Butter/margarine does things for mashed potato mix and canned veggies that I'd forgotten was culinarily possible. Sugar makes any breakfast cereal taste better. Chocolate is a vitamin - esp. to your attitude. Cinnamon for oatmeal.
10. Retorts of spiced salad croutons mix into tuna salad and make a suitable substitute for bread at a fraction of the size or weight. I get the impression dried bread crouton packets would last even if sealed in the pyramids for a millennia or two.
11. Snacks: nuts and raisins, along with granola bars which are both, are the bomb. If I'd had chocolate chips, it would have been heaven. I knew this anyway from backpacking, but after 2-3 weeks, they taste even better than nothing, and they're good for you.
12. Exactly like in backpacking, powdered nonfat milk and dry cereal in water is good stuff. And again, a great place to put dried fruit like raisins and apples, which also works in oatmeal.

Coming up on 30 days this week, I neither gained nor lost weight.
Without being too graphic though, expect a change in daily bathroom habits.

And avoid those trendy protein bars like the devil unless you like the complementary taste of Miralax, and reading War and Peace in the thinking room, with occasional bouts of abdominal pains equivalent to birth pangs. (Actually, it was worse than that.) We should drop those damned things on enemies (along with cans of Vienna sausages), and just sit back and watch. I'm taking them out of everything, as the results (and price) are not worth the penalty, in every sense.

FWIW, I had more than enough stored water, and 1 gallon a day for drinking/cooking/minimal hygiene (washing face, hands, & shaving) per person is adequate for planning purposes.
Washing dishes would be another story. I have picnic plates and plasticware for that, and didn't need to waste them for this experiment to prove the point.
As is sanitation, as some plumbing changes during the month drove home, when I had to fill buckets to flush a couple of times, when the waterworks minions cut off the flow mid-experiment. Not a welcome reality check, but illustrative. If you don't have a 5-gallon bucket with a gamma seal lid or a military 5-gal. water jug or three, and a red wagon or trash dolly - or something better - rectify that.
I had kitty litter and hefty bags, but I wasn't going for the full apocalypse experiment, thanks anyways. TPTB tend to frown on gifting the trash cans with poop, as a rule, so short of an actual emergency, that's that.
I also didn't need to wash clothes over a month, but after two, it'd become more necessary.
Once again, a gallon of water in a five gallon food bucket with laundry soap and a gamma-seal lid, and you have a washing machine. Another gallon to rinse. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. (And it's clean!) Figure two gallons week/per person, per set of clothes. One set (shirt, pants, underwear/socks) fills a bucket, unless you're a 4X and wear coveralls and 4 layers.

My power use was limited to a dorm fridge to preserve food after opening for multiple days, to make OJ and drinks cold, and the use of a microwave for 5-10 minutes nightly. The ability to make or store enough juice to maintain that, along with lighting, would be all I would need for an indefinite period, which is pretty simple. It worked in missile crews and for space stations, and it worked for me.
I could have substituted propane fuel heating for food prep, but the mini-fridge would still be high on the list of really valuable luxury needs, and once you can accommodate that, running a microwave is more economical than storing bulk fuel. 300-plus days out of the year here (SoCal), a solar cooker would be a viable alternative too. So would a Solo stove powered by whatever could be found to burn in it, probably. Have to try both in the near future.

I ate about $2 of food per day, $3 at the most.
Counting power use, my daily expenditure averaged about $4/day. I could do that 24/7/365, so EBT cards are frankly profligate extravagance.

Things I would have changed, and will rectify:
A lot more fruit, canned, dehydrated, and fully dried.
More veggies. A garden for same is already a given. But due to the need/desire for fiber, I'm looking real hard at adding the capability to generate them indoors year-round, with hydroponics in the short term, and aquaculture in the long run.
Flour and sugar would have enabled creation of bread, cookies, crackers, etc. (the occasional cravings for which I would be hard-pressed to over-describe.) I'm not a great scratch cook, but the lack of same the last month eating almost entirely from stored cans and pouches has made the necessity of adding that capability a higher priority. It's tough to channel pioneer grandma, when she died forty years ago, but this month highlighted the benefits of being able to turn wheat into flour, and flour into anything from a sandwich or biscuit to a cake or pie. And a bread maker just went on my Christmas list.
Potatoes. Need more canned new potatoes, and yams.
They would also go along with corn as necessities on any future garden plot. Being able to turn a single potato into a meal, by adding butter, heat, a few ham scrapings or bacon bits, and a little dried onion, drives this home.
Eggs. Dried for certain; live chickens in the long run, for eggs, and meat too. While a tin of sardines with OJ were a surprisingly good breakfast a couple of times, I'm not Norwegian, and would not care to have to repeat that experiment if other choices were available.
A lot more drink mixes for the water supply, and more variety of same.


Canned goods store incredibly well, and stay fresh for 2-5 years. IMO, that's probably the amount you should ultimately aim to keep on hand, and rotate through regularly. Eating a month's worth in one go was an extreme case, but it was only a minor inconvenience. Doing it for a week, let alone just one day, would have been a snap. Even for a family of picky eaters, to say nothing of during an emergency or catastrophe. So you could do one weeks' reserve per month, and never have less than 4 years in canned goods. I understand space is a concern; my supply runs to a year, and takes up nothing more than a broom closet, even with other supplies included. Unless your family is the Brady Bunch, a year's supply is nothing special, and multiple years' worth wouldn't crush anyone with the bother. (Hint: the only reason you couldn't put a year's food per person under each person's bed, right now, is that you haven't tried, and there's too much junk under there you don't need that you haven't thrown away yet. Or they sleep in bunk beds.)
That's ignoring completely doing this with dehydrated foods, or augmenting with home production and canning, fruit trees, beekeeping, etc.

I grew up on a suburban 1/4-acre plot in a teeming city.
On even half that, with minimal use of the front yard, I could produce sufficient food for a family of eight, in my spare time, unless the house on the lot was the Taj Mahal.

But don't take my word for that:
There's even a fantastic book to get you started. I give it 5 stars out of 5.
There's also a companion book that covers livestock animals in depth too. Also 5/5.

Quit making excuses. Get busy.

(Anybody want most of a case of Vienna sausages and protein bars? Shipping is on you. I may list them on the local Craigslist "Free" page, just for the humor factor. Although it probably violates local ordinances, and the Hague Conventions of crimes against humanity. Sigh.)

Night Raid

Las Pulgas Area, 1980something
(Yet another month or two after the last time)

If you read the previous two installments, no points for guessing who had the duty on a balmy midsummer Friday night.

For some reason, the Gunny hadn't given me orders to kill anything this time, which was a disappointment to my cold green amphibious heart, but at the same time, made for a far less stressful stint of making sure everything stayed quiet and peaceful with most of the adult supervision away for the weekend.

There were other Duty nights when I had to be the Bad Guy, and inform a couple of crestfallen young lance corporals that NO, they weren't allowed to bring their sleazy hookers scantily-clad girlfriends into their 4-man room, not leastly because they were dumb enough to let me catch them sneaking them in, which meant they would probably be dumb enough to let the OD or worse catch them sneaking them out. Tactical lessons are where you find them, and they lost that battle.

There was the time I'd had to break up a fight between a beat-down Marine, who'd acquired a pick handle and done quite a spiffy job of avenging himself on one of the four guys who'd jacked him up, "by mistake" it later came out. A gaggle of ambulances and MPs later, that was sorted out.

But this wasn't one of those nights.

Even at midnight, the air was warm, it was a perfect weekend, and the only sound outside was crickets, and the occasional far-off yips and howls of coyotes prowling somewhere in the distance among the surrounding hills.

All I had to do was keep anyone from stealing the 400-foot-long building until 6 AM, and I could sleep in while my assistant watched over the place for the rest of the day.

So just past midnight, I took a walk around the battery area to make sure no one had violated the sanctity of the supply warehouse, the battalion aid station, and finally the armory. The guards there were perfection personified, the midnight relief had gone off flawlessly, and I returned to the battery office to finish out the night with a stack of Louis L'Amour novels and military correspondence courses.

On my way back, I was passing by the trash dumpsters.

Now, military dumpsters aren't like civilian dumpsters, exactly. They stand about 3' taller, thus they hold more trash. The flapping top is way too high to access, so trash is dumped in through two sliding doors on either side, about chest high, and 2 feet square each. Then you close the doors, to keep the trash and the smell inside. That's the theory.

But as I approach, I hear the sound of someone digging through the garbage.
After midnight.
In the dark.

Oh great. SomedumbMarine has probably thrown away his watch/I.D. card/sweetheart's torrid semi-porno love letter by mistake, and in a drunken frenzy, he's trying to locate it by Braille.

Just what I want to deal with at literally oh-dark-thirty at night, a desperate trash-covered drunken Marine private.

So I approach the open hatch on the side I'm closest to, and say to whoever's inside, "Hey what the f---...  !"

I mentioned it's dark, right? Like as in, there's a couple of outside lights on the building half a block away, and a streetlight half a block the other way, but the trash bin is by its lonesome in the middle of a big dark area, on a night with no moon, and the inside of the bin is even darker.

But I'm young, and gradually, the information transmitted from the rods and cones of my retinas starts to take shape in my brain, revealing in slow motion an unfamiliar camouflage pattern, which I finally work out is wearing a black mask, staring right at me in frozen astonishment, and belonging to about 50 pounds of raccoon, just about 3 feet from my head and chest.

Time halts, while with the speed of supercomputers, my brain further informs me that:
I have no gun
I have no stick
I'm standing absolutely flat-footed
I'm between the raccoon and its freedom
I don't speak raccoon
Anything spry enough to leap up to a 5 foot high opening could vault the 3 feet to my face like Spiderman on crack
Raccoons are crazy mad when cornered
Raccoons have sharp fangs and claws
Raccoons are sometimes rabid
I'm probably going to either die a horrible rabies death, or be clawed and maimed for life about the face and neck,and become the base laughingstock, somewhere in the next 2 seconds
I didn't sign up for this shit
There's not a damned thing I can do about it

Mind you, my life didn't flash before me. I didn't crap my cammies nor wet my drawers.
I didn't panic, and I didn't freeze.

I just wondered how in the wide world all this was going to work out, and when, because I was over it about a heartbeat after I realized I'd stepped in it.

And then, about a heartbeat after the info-dump to my situation hit my brain, the biggest damned raccoon I'd ever seen hissed once, jumped out the open door, hit the ground with a palpable thud, and waddled off across the parking lot at what, for 50-pound racoons, was probably something approaching ninja-speed.

NOW the adrenaline-fueled dry mouth fight-or-flight rush hit me.

"M-----f-----," I quietly swore at the retreating ring-tailed little terrorist.
And to preclude a repeat engagement another time, I reached over and slammed the near-side sliding access door firmly closed with a good hard metallic clang.

Whereupon a far bigger raccoon jumped out of the other side open sliding door, and ran even faster to catch up with his friend, now making a beeline to the drainage culvert that led under the main road, the woodlands across it, and freedom.

I felt around in the gravel nearby, and threw everything I could claw out of the ground at the receding furry little bastards. Then walloped the dumpster hard and loud to make good and certain this wasn't any more of a clowncarnucopia of garbage thieves.

After a decent interval and no additional threats to my life or health, I slammed the other side door shut too, and let my heart rate ease back down into second gear.

"Davy Crockett should've made your great-grandparents into hats back in 1830 when he had the chance!" I muttered.

And then, relieved that no one had witnessed my near-death experience, I quickly and smartly slunk back to the battery office, closed the door, and occupied myself with tales of the Sacketts and the intricacies of the M249 SAW until sun-up.

Never get out of the f-----g boat! Absolutely g--d----d right.

Lesson learned: there's nothing in regulations that says I can't carry a pick handle and a flashlight after dark. And the next guy I catch leaving the hatch open to the dumpster after emptying his trash is going to get skinned, so help me Chesty Puller.

Hose Job

Las Pulgas Area, 1980something
(a couple of months after the last time...)

It's another fine day in the Corps, every day a holiday, every meal a feast.
Except that they forget to tell me that every other month means I've got the Duty. And invariably, on a weekend.

So, naturally, owing to my superior job performance last time, Battery Gunny drops another tactical exercise on me before we secure for the weekend.

"Water that lawn."

"Lawn" is a charitable description. What it is, is a pair of scraggly 6 foot wide by 100 yard long strips between the building and the parking lot on each side, with random patches of grass, and a couple of dozen ankle-twisting gopher holes. Included among their random casualties on more than one occasion has been yours truly.

"But Gunny, it's full of gopher holes."

"Yeah. Do what you can about that, too."

And after Fredo's got the pole in his hand, and he's looking the other way, see that he doesn't make it back to the dock.

"Aye aye, Gunny."

"Problem: Given a patch of lunar landscape, a tactical unit, comprised of one NCO, and equipped with 100' of rubber hose, a shovel, and a pressurized water supply, will clear enemy bunkers, and hold and improve the position IAW commander's intent until relieved."

And hey, I'd seen Caddyshack. Unfortunately, no C-4 and blasting machines.
So instead, I deployed the hose. Found a nice big hole, snaked 3-4' of hose into it, and let rip with the pressure. Then went to the Duty office to catch up on letter-writing.

When I came out to survey my domain an hour later, water has percolated up out of three other holes, and is now starting to drain onto the parking area. As I'm picking out a new complex, I catch sight of my elusive prey: the Varmint Cong!

I finish my next deployment of hose and fire it up, then retrieve a shovel from the supply locker.

Victor Charles is stretched out prone, looking rather waterlogged. And, I swear to Buddha, doing the cartoon-approved "Kaff! Kaff!" of every near-drowning victim in every cartoon from Chip and Dale to Bugs Bunny ever made. Like a wet little house pet with a hairball. So, apparently, gophers don't have gills. Pity, that. I cock back with the shovel to make gopher pate, and just as my swing is at the apex, a voice from behind me says,
"What are you doing?"

It's Sgt. Fiveminutestoolate, famous platoon guide who's always brilliant, just a bit tardy with his pearls of wisdom. In this case, in his liberty attire, heading out for the weekend.

"Oh, just taking care of the First Sergeant's gopher problem, Sgt." I reply non-chalantly.

"Well, don't get caught. The base game wardens from Provost Marshall's Office will cite the unit and skin you alive they find out you're dispatching wildlife on post. Everything's protected except mosquitoes."

"You're $#!^^ing me."

"Nope. Gospel truth. They take that tree-hugging noise pretty serious at Base HQ."

Son of a...! After the Mouse Massacre, I don't need any more heart-to-heart chats with First Sergeant. And yet, they told me to get rid of the gopher problem. So clearly, it's time to deploy Initiative, Judgement, and Integrity to solve this little poser.

Meanwhile, Mister Charles is drying off a bit, and getting a bit friskier as he coughs up most of that delicious base tap water I was putting out for him to drink, Officer, I swear. So I decide that, like the Forest Service on the Wonderful World of Disney, if I can't dispatch the unruly bears, I'll transplant them. In this instance, just across the road.

Our side, the west side, of the road, is nothing but barracks, warehouses, parade field, chow hall, armory, and all the other stuff we need to kill people and break things when so ordered. But the east side of the road, just across the street, is boundless square miles of gopher paradise.

So instead of rendering Victor Charles into crow bait, I gently scoop him up with the business end of the long shovel, walk him across the road, and deposit him daintily on a nice piece of real estate, safe and sound, and freshly laundered.

PMO's duly appointed Game Wardens can now officially eat me.

An hour later, 5 more holes are bubbling over like Jed Clampett's pool of crude. And two more relatives of Mister Charles are doing the land crawl. Once again, I scoop up the furry little bastards and drop them off on their new homeland to the east. I note that Mr. Charles has already made a hasty escape, and is not where I left him.

By dark, all the holes have percolated with a satisfying fullness. And I've made half a dozen trips across the road with about a dozen gophers, killing not a blessed one, ye minions of stupidity, note it well!

Lacking a body count, and suitably warned off in my prior encounter with the First Sergeant, no entry was made in the duty logs outside the normally expected prose.

But when 1600 Saturday rolled around, all the gopher holes had been filled in, and the grass median was as flat as a billiard table. Seeding it can be some other schmuck's problem, but at least I'll never twist another ankle coming and going to morning PT in the dark.

Mission accomplished, Gunny.
In fact, the little freeloaders got a bath and free drinks, courtesy of me and Uncle Sam.
So I guess I could report that the gopher's quarters were given a proper Field Day.
And no godless communist bastard gophers were harmed in the making of this post.

Repel Boarders

Las Pulgas Area, 1980something

It's a Friday afternoon, it's a beautiful spring weekend in Southern California, I have money, a hot car, and a hot girlfriend less than an hour's drive away.

Except despite being the most senior NCO in grade, I'm also the newest NCO in unit, meaning when the duty roster came out, guess who drew Duty NCO?

Saigon. Shit. I prayed for a mission, and for my sins, they gave it to me.
And after this one, I'd never want another one.

Battery Gunny pulls me aside after Friday liberty call formation, and says to me, "Corporal, the Skipper and the First Sergeant have a problem. The Battery office space is infested by a bunch of free-loading mice. I got some traps and some bait, and I want you to get rid of those mice while you're Duty NCO. Clear?"

"Aye aye, Guns. I'm on it. Consider it done."

Strapping on my shiny and well-utilized cartridge belt, with suitably flawless polished eagle, globe and anchor insignia, I strut right into the company offices, and relieve the lucky SOB sergeant who gets a full weekend off. He hands me the log book, duty roster, and a paper sack, courtesy of Guns.

"The mice are probably coming in through here," he points to a hole in the drywall, about the size of a dime, at the floorboard. "Good luck, and good hunting."

Full disclosure: I'm a city boy. Big yard, lots of time in the woods, but the only mice I've seen are either white, for snake food at the pet store, or black, large, and supervising festivities about 50 miles north, at a big castle next to the Matterhorn in Anaheim.

Number one, this is a new barracks, Steel, and concrete. So I'm wondering WTF a bunch of mice are doing in a brand new building.
Number two, that hole is way too small for a mouse. I know this because I know nothing about mice except a lifetime of Tom and Jerry cartoons, and how in real life they're the all-time ninjas of the home. Especially when the home is built on the middle of 200 square miles of fairly pristine Southern California chapparral and scrub oak environment. With a decided lack of housecats or snakes in the building to winnow their numbers.

Ours not to reason why, I look around the offices, sans CO or First Sgt. If I'm going to "take charge of this post and all government property in view," by God, I'll do it right!
I move a couple of filing cabinets, and lo and behold, there's two more holes, one of them with mouse turds and freshly nibbled sheetrock around it. Gotcha, you little rodents!

I open the bag left by Guns.
Half a dozen Victor mousetraps, and a packet of MRE peanut butter. "Geez, that stuff kills grown men. Why bother with the mouse traps, that's just piling on." I think to myself. But orders are orders, so I deploy my weaponry, applying a squirt of (government alleged) peanut butter to the triggers, and place my little Claymore minefield ambush around each hole, two traps per hole, one on each side.

I go back to the phone in the front office where the Duty is supposed to sit, knowing that this'll never amount to anything, and why doesn't Guns know that mice eat cheese, so he should have gotten me
SNAP!

I go back to the Ambush Zone, survey my trap line, and sure enough, smacked asunder, sits one fat stinking mouse. And the little sumbitch didn't even get any peanut butter. I unspring the trap, dropping his dead carcass into the trash, reset the catch and redeploy my M1 Mousetrap as per before. I flip the lights off, sit back down in my chair and open the duty log to
SNAP!
SNAP!

WTF?! I get back up, turn the lights in the back room on again, and sure enough, note two more casualties, one still reflexively twitching. Another trip to the trash, plus replacing the displaced bait, and back down they go. I figure this ought to do it for the night, three holes, three mice, so now I can make a quick trip to my room to fetch that new Tom Clancy novel about the submarine I've been meaning to read
SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

Okay, someone's f*****g with me here. Back to the kill zone, and amazingly, four sprung traps, three fresh kills. Either one got away, or one of them tripped two traps for the price of one body.
Back to the trash, then the bait, then reset.

I make it out of the office this time, get the book, and come back.
Just to be safe, I check the trapline, but everything's still set.
Checking my watch, I note it's near the hour, so I make the obligatory entry in the book, noting the details of conditions and results for future generations. Normally, this amounts to a terse and straightforward block-printed entry like
"1700. BATTERY AREA ALL SECURE." which repeats endlessly back in time and presumably, through volume after volume, at every command Marine Corps-wide, since they wore tri-corner hats and carried flintlocks on sailing ships.
But not today. I make my notations, and go back to my novel.

The night wears on. Every hour I make a circuit of the area, to make sure the concrete building hasn't been stolen or burned down. Every 4 hours I check on the Armory guards, the Supply warehouse, the parking area, etc. Swap visits to chow with my similarly screwed assistant, a lance corporal. And, with a random regularity, answer the decreasing but steady patter of trap snaps.

All goes to plan, trading duty back and forth with my assistant, and checking my ambush zone, until I hand the whole deal over to the guy stuck with the next day's duty, at 1600 Saturday.

I enjoy my abbreviated weekend, and return safely back to base. After standing formation Monday, word is passed that I'm to report to the Battery First Sergeant ASAP.

"Reporting as ordered, First Sergeant."

Standing at ease in the prescribed position of parade rest, my hawk-eyed peripheral vision detects that the First Sgt. has the duty logbook in front of him.

"You had duty Friday night and Saturday, Corporal?"

"Yes, First Sergeant."

"You maintained the duty log during that time?"

"Yes, First Sergeant."

"And what about all that?"

"First Sergeant, the Battery Gunny told me that you and the CO wanted the mice in the office spaces gone."

"Yes, so we did, and so they seem to be. So you were the one who recorded, among the other similar entries, quote '0600 - AMBUSH SUCCESSFUL, 27 GODLESS COMMUNIST MICE KIA, NO FRIENDLY CASUALTIES, ALL WEAPONS DEPLOYED AND OPERATIONAL, WILL REQUIRE BAIT RESUPPLY BEFORE DUSK, BATTERY AREA ALL SECURE.' unquote?"

"Yes, First Sergeant."

"Well done. They were shittin' all over the office and messin' up my paperwork and reports. Really pissed me off. That's some funny shit too. But the CO reads the logbook every workday, and the Colonel looks all the logs over once or twice a month. Don't ever do that again. Understand?"

"Aye aye, First Sergeant!"

"Dismissed."

And that was all that was ever said about the Las Pulgas Mouse Massacre.
I figure it's been long enough that the federal statute of limitations on crimes against the legions of Mousitania has expired, but if I'm mistaken, and they drag me in, I'm pretty sure to the best of my recollection that I was acting on direct telephonic orders from CIA Director William Casey by way of Lt. Col. Ollie North.

But never underestimate the power of MRE peanut butter to inflict casualties.

Certified Rat Assassins

So I'm working for a movie-of-the-week, and this day we're in a really sterling location in downtown, in a vacant building that deserves to be vacant. All the working trucks are parked in the alley in back. We're shooting nights, so we get there just before dusk for an all-night funfest.

And it just happens that the location is right across the alley from the local downtown Taco Bell, who have their dumpster out back. Our alley hits another one in a T, so from the back loading dock, you can see for blocks across downtown.

Everything's going fine, I'm outside grabbing a soda from the craft service truck, and it's maybe 9 or 10 PM. All of a sudden, there's the most ear-shattering scream, and it's coming from one of the 40-footer trucks.

Everyone goes running to the sound, and it turns out that it was one of the special effects assistants, in this case also the girlfriend of the son of the effects master. The male assistant, his boss/dad, his uncle, and their long-time friend, all come thundering out along with a number of other crew members to see what's going on.

The victim calms down enough, and Papa EFX asks her "What happened?"

"It...it was...was a...a big, black...RAT!!!" she sobs out between shudders."Over in THAT dumpster!"

Most of the crew, notified that a rat(!) has been sighted in an alley downtown, yawn, turn away and go back to work.

But not the EFX Family. This is a matter of the Family's honor.

"There, there, babygirl. We'll take care of that nasty old rat, and he'll never bother you again."

Whereupon they all retire to the bowels of the EFX truck. In about 2 minutes, they come out armed for Ratmageddon.

"Hey, Doc, can you point this over there when we're ready?" asks Papa EFX, as he hands me a bazillion-power handheld floodlight.

"Sure, just say when."

We're all standing on the liftgate of the EFX truck, about 5 ft. off the ground, and right across from a Taco Bell dumpster brimming over with piles of the greasy leftovers and trashbag detritus piled up to the top by the dining room cleaners. Grease and salsa literally leak out the bottom through holes, and pool underneath the thing on the asphalt below.

Looking like the Wild Bunch, the EFX family are standing shoulder to shoulder, with me off to the side next to them on the left.

"Okay Doc, hit it!"

I switch on the handheld equivalent of the Bat-signal, and there, in the spotlight, sits Our Villain. And he doesn't even act like we're a threat to his dinner. He's about to find out how wrong he is.

"Open fire!" sez Papa.
All four of them open up with a barrage of paintball guns, all loaded to the brim with spark hits. These are special pellets that make a bright flash when they hit anything, to simulate sparks during gunfire. Well, somewhere in the fusillade, Rat Fink takes a bullseye, and dives into the dumpster with a soprano squeal of sheer rat-terror.

A momentary explosion of laughter is uttered by the Wild Bunch, until about two seconds later, it becomes clear that the squeal is apparently not just an exclamation of Rat Fink terror, it's also evidently the rodent equivalent for "Everyone! Get the **** out of here NOW!" because right then easily 80 rats, all bigger than Rat Fink, come boiling up out of the smorgasbord of grease-laden Taco Bell delights, bounce out of the dumpster, and hit the alley at a dead stampede.

I swing the light onto the new targets, and what ensues next can only be described as a rat-hater's wet dream in a target-rich environment. Spark hits are smacking the rats silly, knocking them over again and again, but not killing them, further terrifying the herd, and driving them in a tsunami of rodentia. They bounce off dumpsters and brick walls on all sides, until finally by process of elimination, they hit upon the open alley to the north, and begin scampering thataway at a ferocious speed as fast as their little legs can carry them.

And the Wild Bunch all have 200-round hoppers of spark hits, and they're going hog-wild, like this is The Matrix, and Neo and Trinity have hit the lobbyful of Agents. In this case, Agent Rat.

Like a strobe light on crack, the sparks fly, the rats bounce, tumble in a maelstrom of tails, fur, and little feet, pick themselves up, and scamper on in a full-tilt panic-stricken frenzy, until, some multiple dozens of yards away, they are finally safely out of range of the Wild Bunch's aim. Which is just as well, because after loosing off hundreds of shots, most of which connected, they're almost all out of ammo, and the laughing they're doing is degrading their accuracy severely.

"There ya go, baby, those rats won't bother you any more, okay?" says Papa EFX.

I'm in tears, and my sides hurt, as I hand them back the nuclear-powered flashlight.

I've never been a Forward Observer for Certified Rat Assassins before, and I'll never forget this mission. That smell...that flash powder smell. Nothing smells like that.
It smells like...victory.

Caterwauling

From my prior post, please don't think I'm biased. I like cats too. Especially with mustard and relish. (Just a little humor to torque off any PETA freaks.)

Seriously, I do like cats, and have owned a number of them. They're neater, more self-sufficient, and generally quieter and less bother than dogs.

But there are two types of cats: Your own cats. And those other blasted furry terrorists.

I was studying for finals one night. Long enough ago that the statute of limitations applies. It was about 3 AM, with me earnestly reviewing vital material, when one of the local feline lotharios decided he was in the mood, and a serenade was in order.

I'm not some puritanical prude, and feel perfectly alright about Mr. Tom finding an amenable partner where and as he may do so. I even support his right to free speech to advertise his availability.

But after an hour's enlightened outlook upon his incessant offers from a thoroughly uninterested neighborhood, and much studying yet to be done, it was time to explain the facts of life to this particular tomcat.

Unfortunately for him, he was on my street. A block north, east, or west, and he could have paraded indefinitely without incurring any of my ire. But my south windows and balcony all faced his chosen cruising territory.

Also, it was his bad luck to be white. Not caucasian, but rather, that particular shade of dirty white-furred beast that shows up handily under moonlight and streetlamps.

Strike three was my possession of a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun (without a compass on the stock or a thing which tells time, for any fans of A Christmas Story out there).

For the unitiated, the Daisy BB gun is a work of civilized art at its pinnacle. It's quiet, it's simple to operate, fairly accurate, and rather benign. By which, I mean to explain that there was no danger of killing Mr. Tom in using it to dissuade him from his amorous prowlings, due to its low power and poor penetration.

To be fair, it stings like a son-of-a-. You certainly wouldn't want to get shot in the eye or anything equally foolish. But a smack in the gluteus makes a bee sting feel like a lover's kiss.

At any rate, three strikes and Mr. Tom's out. It was time to regain the solitude of my studies.
I crept out onto the patio, and searched for my quarry. More bad juju for Tom: he was just across the street, coming right up to a conveniently lit streetlamp, and well within my weapon's range and estimable personal marksmanship skills.

One flick of the lever, then carefully sighting in like a Force Recon sniper on my little dirty white prey, and I was poised to let fly.

Ping!...............Thwapp!
REEOOOWWWWRRRRR!

If you've seen the "Bring Out Your Dead" scene in Monty Python and the Quest For The Holy Grail, I observe firsthand that a thwacked tomcat, when hit in the rear haunch, makes exactly the same noise as the cat in the movie. EXACTLY.

This one also ran back about 10 feet, then stopped, turned, and licked furiously at the mysterious affliction to his hindquarter.

Then resumed his quest for a girlfriend. Ah, the power of biology.

(Sigh.)

I re-cocked, and re-laid the front sight on the same eastern end of the westbound tomcat.

Ping!....................Thwap!
REEOOOWWWWRRRRR!!!!!

Exuent Tom Cat, stopping occasionally to lick the same pained haunch, who then continues at a high rate of speed down the street, around the corner, and off to a happier singles' scene than under my window.

And, for the "Awwwwwwww!" crowd, he left in full possession and use of all limbs, little the worse for wear. And in all honesty, he was out of water balloon range anyway.

I got an A on the final.

And if it makes anyone feel better, in my anatomy class we had to dissect a cat. I was not only a vegetarian by choice for the duration of that semester, but my assigned victim was a black and white tuxedo tomcat, the penance for which dissection moved me to find and adopt not one but two such tuxedo cats as kittens for some 12 years until their deaths as suitably aged and happy housepets. Fred and Ginger were definitely the best cats that ever were.

(Not least of which because they didn't howl all night long.)

Barking Mad

I don't dislike dogs, but I've never owned one, and was not raised with one as a family pet.

Frankly, I see this as no fault, much as I admire such loyal and faithful companions.

Why can best be explained by a lesson in my formative years. It was a balmy Southern California evening, with nothing much on TV, and little constructive I felt like doing.

What follows may help to explain the ancient Greek adage: "Beat your child once a week. Even if you don't know why you're doing it, he will."

I went and found my baby brother (who stopped being my little brother long about 4th grade, when he began to outgrow me) and we headed out to the back yard. Then we climbed up the barred window of my father's workshop, and onto the garage roof. It was the one place where we knew no adult would ever be, and our parents had long since stopped trying to keep us off of it, usually warning us only to avoid falling off and killing ourselves.

This night, it was a stage. Because we had cats, whereas nearly every other neighbor had dogs. I'd never been to their houses or yards, but I knew this was so.

I demonstrated this contention to my baby brother thusly:
"Watch this."

Whereupon I began, rather convincingly, to bark, yap, and woof. Like some scrappy mutt, I kept at it, growling, barking, and generally annoying the bejeezus out of the neighbor's two hounds. So they started barking back at me.

BB thought this was cool, but I was just getting started.

Walking to the opposite corner of the roof, I barked some more. In no time, I had the other neighbor's faithful yard patrol barking back at me.

I barked more. Louder. More frequently. Soon the dogs beyond each neighbors' house began barking back, which only intensified the dogs nearest us. I continued.

In a matter of 2-3 minutes, I'd succeeded in getting every dog in a 20-house radius to bark their fool heads off, each in turn aggravating their fellows all the more.

Then, I stopped, sat down, and basked in the cacophony of canine commotion I had ignited.
It was raucous, terrible, horrible, and glorious. It completely drowned out my laughter and that of my brother.

In another eternal 2 minutes of howling madness, porch lights began snapping on, spreading down the block like ripples on a pond, and owners' voices could be heard shushing, yelling, and berating their pets roundly and scathingly.

The din ebbed, and I immediately began egging them on, quickly rousing one and all to full voice once again.

Porch lights snapped back on, and now owners could be seen and heard going out and corraling their animals.

At this point, exuent myself and my padawan brother, having successfully killed almost 15 minutes at no cost to ourselves, with a form of entertainment whose price was above rubies, as we returned inside the only house in the neighborhood shrouded in a cocoon of blissful peace.

Bear

The Actual "Bear", himself, in his earlier work.

We're sitting around outside the set for the day, and one of our co-stars is about 5' away.

He is "Bear". Aptly named, since he is, in fact, 900-odd pounds of Alaskan Kodiak Brown. He was, in point of fact, the star of the movie The Bear. His head is larger around than the spare tire on my truck. His jaws would break 4x4s like matchsticks. His paws are the size of dinner plates, with 3-4" long claws that would tear through his trailer sides like a hot knife going through butter, were it not for the solid steel prison bar panels that have been welded continuously around said trailer.

It was once a trailer for 4 horses, but with the inner dividers removed, it's a snug fit for Bear. It's hooked to a Chevy Suburban. About 40' away is an identical rig, but with the smaller second banana for the day, "Griz," who's a mere 800-lb. grizzly bear. Just in case Bear chooses not to be feeling his motivation for today's festivities on set.

There's a small knot of us just out of paw-swiping reach at the end of Bear's portable domicile, marvelling at his magnificent beastliness. If not for the knowledge that he could rip my body asunder in two quick gulps, he almost looks petable.

His trainer/minder is about 20' off to our left, and he's about to tell us something: "I wouldn't stand..."

WOOF!
Wham!

Laying flat on his underside, Bear has let out a gentle "Woof!" and slammed only his front paws on the floor of his trailer. The motion shakes 3 tons of car and trailer like a chihuahua in a hurricane. The noise decalcifies every spinal column within 50 yards, and we notice that we've all, involuntarily it appears, levitated some 20 feet sideways away from the trailer without having taken a single step.

I look up at the trainer, with a spreading smirk on his face. I siddle over to him.
"You were about to say...?"

"Well, that's Bear's personal cave, so to speak. When people crowd around the front of it, it can get him a little agitated."

"Well, we certainly don't want to be working with 900 pounds of agitated Kodiak bear, do we?"

"Naw, ya probably don't. He was just doing that to make some daylight, and get a rise out of you folks. Now he's got some clear space by the mouth of his territory."

"So we just rewarded bad behavior, in so many words?"

"That's about the size of it."

Duly informed on bear psychology and behavior, I decide discretion is the better part of valor. I will monitor the activities from safely outside the set, on the theory that if I get eaten, there'll be no one around to bandage the survivors of a bear rampage. The utterly self-preservationist aspect of this decision is wholly coincidental, I swear.

Bear's co-handler arrives, and by and by, she and the head trainer lead him to the set. They have set up the World's Thinnest Wire, attached to a car battery, such that a miniscule pop and zap is the result, should Bear venture out of his assigned range on set. It is tantamount to putting a spider web around an army tank, but I'm not the pro bear handler. Other than that, his motivation for his scenes is generally a Jet-Puff marshmallow. They throw them where they want him, and over he goes, shuffling and snuffling. Seeing this, I make sure my chair - well off of the stage - is sited to view the stage door, and that my car keys are in my front pocket, should Bear suddenly charge outside, and they need someone to drive away for help. Like to downtown Los Angeles, 50 miles away. There's nothing wrong with being prepared, after all.

After a pleasant 4 hours or so of reading, catching up on the newspaper, visiting the craft service snack table (wisely kept off-stage for the day) etc., I decide prudence dictates a brief foray onto set to see how things are going, and see if anyone needs anything. And/or to verify that they aren't all laying about in great bloody heaps after Bear has killed them all, and is thence devouring one and sundry at his formidable leisure.

The set is totally dark when I enter, and unnaturally quiet. But I can see people silhouetted against the lit scene tableau, and they appear to be alive. I quietly move towards a better view of the action. Everyone is quiet, speaking in inaudible whispers mouth-to-ear when necessary, except the trainer and the 1st Assistant Director, talking about what they'd like Bear to do. It is an atmosphere of quiet professionalism conducted in a dark, church-like hush.

Our entire cast is laying in sleeping array under blankets, 20 feet from the bear. They finish that part, and the cast quietly and gratefully departs, to be replaced by dummies for the next scene. I get near camera just as they are doing the scene where Bear is to discover the one luckless sleeping cast-member, grab him by the leg, and rip him and drag him off stage.

Two grips move a body-weight dummy into position, and we begin. Bear finds his target, and tosses 200 pounds of dummy about exactly like the rag doll it is. If this were a human, Bear would be dining on Leg of Human now. He finishes his antics, and goes back to snuffling and devoring his Jet-Puff marshmallows, carried by the trainer in a large stainless steel bucket, and tossed one at a time nearby.

"Uh oh."

It's the trainer's voice. A gunshot couldn't have paralyzed the set more quickly or completely.

Our 1st AD: What's the matter?"

"I'm out of marshmallows."

MUCH longer pause.
200 eyes note the nearest exit, and whether they might outrun the fatter and slower crew members to get through it, should the need arise. The electrician running a light on a platform 20' up a metal roof support uses his foot to nudge a knotted rope down to one of his comrades, in case he needs to save at least one other witness to the impending melee. If possible, it is even quieter than when I came in. I can almost hear 100 hearts beating. The pounding of my own makes up for the lack.

Our 1st AD, voice with a noticeable Don Knotts-like quiver: "I...uhhh, I thought the bear only works for marshmallows...?"

"That's right."

"So what do we do now?"

"I'm working on it..."

It's been maybe 30 seconds. A lifetime or two. Bear is beginning to get bored with his cinematic exploits. The shock wire is looking extremely small. I ever-so-nonchalantly move a step or two backwards, to clear an area around me for my possible break to freedom. As 99 other crew members do the same thing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the female handler sprinting back onstage with not one but two bags of Jet-Puff marshmallows in her hands. From 40 feet away she throws one to the lead trainer. Joe Montana and Jerry Rice have never had as much coordination, nor as much fan energy focused on their efforts as this toss has.

The bag arcs and is caught in a beautiful pass completion, and the lead trainer pivots in one graceful motion while tearing the bag, and throws several marshmallows all around Bear. Bear finds one, and turns his head back to the set just before he's gotten totally bored with screen stardom.

100 hearts shift back down to 2nd gear, and I feel and hear 100 sighs. It's all we can do to not spontaneously applaud.

Every one on set is fine. I have narrowly avoided the one moment when we all could have become bear buffet. Fate has been tempted enough for one day.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. Because I'm getting back outside. NOW.

I return to my chair outside, swiftly and quietly, and vow to remain there despite any curiosity unless called for. On my way out, I let the sound mixer know that if they need me, they should call me...after the bear has been dispatched, should there be a bloody rampage.

I am reminded of the words of Chef in Apocalypse Now: "Never get out of the effing boat."
Absolutely g**d***** right.

I also reflect that there was a time, in my earlier years selling firearms at retail, when some Mighty Hunter would share that a fishing or backpacking trip to bear country was planned, and inquiring what make and model of handgun would be best to carry for protection from said bears.

People had argued near endlessly and mock-authoritatively about .44 magnums, .454 Casulls, and such.

I share to you now, for all eternity, that a Barrett M82 rifle in .50 caliber Browning Machine Gun would not be too much gun for the task contemplated, but that should 20 or more pounds of $8000 rifle be considered a bit much to tote on a fishing expedition, a suitable alternative is a small 2-inch barreled pistol in either .38Special or 9mm.

Should a bear anything like Bear or Griz decide to molest you, the technique I recommend is to immediately draw the pistol, place it just behind your own ear at a .45 degree upward angle, and squeeze the trigger just before his jaws approach your body, and you'll never feel a thing.