A City Girl In Slapout

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

I was born and raised in a rural area, but I have never been one of those girls who likes spiders, roaches, and other various rodents. I can tolerate a spider, as long as it keeps a respectable distance. I cannot, however, tolerate a roach. When I stumble across a roach, someone in the house must produce a dead one in order for my heartrate to decrease and my blood pressure to return to within normal limits. This drama does not even begin to describe my behavior at the sight of a mouse. My panic stricken antics are best compared to those of in-patients at the state mental hospital.

This being said, I have been very blessed. I have lived in the city since going away to college, and – believe it or not – have rarely ever laid eyes on any of these god-awful little critters.

Then,I moved to Slapout. Since I live right in the middle of what used to be a big ole’ cotton field, and just yards away from the lake, I pay that darlin' Mr. Fuller a king’s ransom to keep my home critter free. He comes every month, and climbs into the attic to check for evidence. He has not found any yet (or at least that is what he tells me). I know he's lying to me, but that's why I love him so....

It was Sunday afternoon, the day God appointed for rest and relaxation. I had eaten lunch with my parents and gone over to my brother’s house down the road to play the Wii with his kids. I came home late in the afternoon, grabbed the keys out of the ignition, my cell phone from the passenger seat, and walked around the front of my car as I always do. I stopped dead in my tracks. I was looking eye ball to eye ball with a field rat the size of ancient dinosaurs from millions of years ago! He was sitting in my door stoop!


There was no moment of pondering over the situation…I acted immediately. I stood stone-still and called my brother on my cell phone! A reasonable solution to my problem, don’t you think? He could just come right over and kill the thing for me. Problem solved. Dan didn’t agree, and could not have been less concerned about my dilemma! He suggested a broom. However, this beast was standing between me and the door to my house. How was I suppose to get to a broom? If I had gone into the house using the patio door, it would have required me to take eyes off of the beast, and that wasn’t happenin…know what I am sayin?


I turned off the phone, frustrated by the lack of assistance offered by brother, Dan. I continued my stare-down and began to talk to the mighty beast. Thinking back, I am not really sure what I intended to accomplish with this vocal prelude, but it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time. I gathered all the courage I could muster and took one step toward the black beast. He took off running down the side of the carport, around the corner to the patio, and stopped in the door stoop of the patio door. Shew!!


I raced to the carport door, unlocked the door with fumbling, shaking fingers, ran to the laundry and got a broom because that is what Dan told me to do. Next, I ran to the window to make sure that the beast was still sitting at the patio door. There, with only a 6 X 6 glass window separating us, I saw him tucking his big nose under the patio door. He was looking for a way into my house! aww...no...that black disease-infested critter is not gettin' one nose hair inside my house...aint gonna happen.

I looked at the broom… a lot of good that thing was gonna do me. I wasn’t about to get close enough to the beast to hit it with a broom, and besides, I was shaking so badly that my aim would be off!

The moment of truth had come. I had about ten seconds to think of Plan B. I raced to the door underneath the kitchen sink. What could I find? Dawn detergent was out….Clorox wipes would help me either. Wasp and hornet spray?? Perhaps. It did have a fogger nozzle on it so that I could hit from 15 feet away. That idea sounded appealing. The bottle was almost full. I decided that I would just keep spraying him until he was poisoned, or the bottle was empty, whichever came first. I did have the broom for back up. I ran back to the window to check on him one more time. Still there.

I took a deep breath because the battle horn was sounding! I walked outside across the carport and onto the deck. I was out in the open; the little bastard couldn’t get to me if he wanted to. My blood-curling screams should have brought neighbors running to my backyard from every single direction. I will have you know that no one…not one single soul…came to see what all the screaming was about. I sprayed that sorry joker with the hornet spray, doused him good. He ran back and forth trying to outrun it, but I was in complete control. Every once in a while, he would stop running, sit up on his hind legs and lick his front legs. I was thinking: “Go on ahead, you dirty little critter. Lick yourself, graveyard dead.”


As long as he was sitting still, I was calm and quiet. When he started acting crazy and running around, I sprayed him with my wasp/hornet fogger, while simultaneously screaming like a victim in a horror movie. These ear-piercing screams often lasted close to a minute, and came again and again as I fought the beast.

As any soldier in battle, I lost all track of time. I knew that only a small portion of my hornet spray remained. The beast was losing the battle. He now appeared to be paralyzed on his right side and suffered what looked like little mini-seizures. Despite his massive size, I convinced myself that he was past the point of no return. I allowed him to wobble across the carport and out into the empty field behind the house.

As he staggered across the yard, I spoke to him like a formidable opponent: “Go back to where you came from and let all of your friends lick the rest of that poison off of you." "Then, tell ‘em all to stay away from here.This is MY house.”

I turned back around to the patio. I make no analogies; my patio looked like a battlefield,for real. Every piece of patio furniture had been overturned. My ash tray was dumped over and all of its contents spilled everywhere. Streams of hornet spray covered walls, windows and doors. The fumes would have affected anyone without the massive amount of adrenaline that I was experiencing at the time. I picked up the phone and called my brother. “The beast is dead.”

I learned that more than 40 minutes had passed since I first called to solicit his help. It mattered not how much time I had spent, only that I could go to bed that night and know that the beast had no intentions of returning to my door stoop. I cleaned up the mess, picked up my furniture, washed the walls and windows, and returned to the safety of my home, feeling much like David must have felt the day he killed Goliath with a slingshot. Who says a city girl can’t make in Slapout.