I spent yesterday afternoon recovering from a very intense teachers v students Futsal match and celebrating the end of a successful year with my team at The End bar. They serve a remarkable stout made with local coffee, simply delicious. I’d buy it by the bottle if I could. The End is in the space where a Brisbane institution once resided. Trash Video was the best video store. A massive curated collection of pulp, cult, foreign and just plain weird cinema. The store struggled through the first wave of P2P sharing but went under like the vast majority of others as piracy became more convenient and normalised in Australia.
I got home in time to put L & F to bed. Watched some increasingly disappointing Jessica Jones with N. Created a bucket trap and set the rat kill traps.
Since the flood event in May we have had repeated rodent incursions. The night of the flood we could hear chittering in the walls. Those first rats were tenacious and took weeks to eliminate. One built a nest behind the oven, which required the landlord’s intervention to remove.
Since then it’s been like there is a little neon sign over the drains below our house with “Land of Milk and Honey Motel: Vacancy!” emblazoned on it. We’ve had a respite of a month or so, until last weekend we saw a young mouse. Since then we have seen at least three more, all adorable with the foolhardy fearlessness of young rodents. We had a clean kill the night before last. Not so last night.
Nadine nudged me awake at one saying that the trap in the kitchen had gone off. It had caught a mouse by the paw. I crushed the pitiful creature’s skull with a hammer and disposed of its corpse. All handled in the semi conscious fug of the middle of the night. I don’t like killing things, cute little furry animals least of all. On my most recent visit to my father’s house he killed a rat that had taken up residence in my stepmother’s book shop. He reflected afterwards that this business of killing things seems to have remained firmly in the realm of men’s business. Maybe in other relationships that is not the case, but it is true enough of mine as well.
Phone bus commute post – Edited for clarity at home.
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