Triaxiansilk.com

That's Pittsburgh! I told you: Ugly name, pretty place, and very green. That's a park at the bottom of my hill! They just renovated that park. The field in the picture is the field my son played soccer on eight years ago. That field was always a mess. It wanted to be a swamp. Finally they let it be a swamp! They built the boardwalk over parts of the new swamp. This is a valley, and there are trails up the side of the hill. The views are stunning.

You can hear traffic from the highways and the stream smells like a sewer, but birds and wildlife seem to be thriving.

Why "Ugly name"'?
Certainly the place looks lovely.

In English, if you say this is "the pits" it means it is terrible (like as low as you can go).

I suspect William Pitt is rolling over in his English grave.

A combination of nature and city sounds great to me. Walk among trees, listen to a babbling brook, grab milk on the way home, enjoy a short commute, and worry less about bears. Of course, that's assuming people aren't shooting at each other through your front porch.

justTripn wrote:In English, if you say this is "the pits" it means it is terrible (like as low as you can go).

Thanks.

I won't even tell you what Pitt can mean in Swedish slang...!

Im curious, I'm curious, I'm curious....

Think of the alternate name for a rooster.

Ahhhh.....

Crappy camera phone pics ahead...


ELVIS



MR. BOO

Cute! Love the name Elvis for a cat.

Mr. Boo has one heck of a freckle or birthmark or whatever in his iris there.

Thanks, Alelou! Elvis pretty much picked his own name; it was the only thing he'd come to when I called him, lol. The vet said that the brown spot on Mr. Boo's eye was likely the result of an injury. He was an adult stray when I got him 13 years ago so he came to us with issues.

No pictures today; you have seen my two pets: one parrot and one rabbit. But we have a mouse or mice who have been eating bits of food our pets drop when we don't clean up fast enough. One mouse is getting real brave, it scurries across the floor within a couple of feet of the humans in the house. I swear that it is the biggest, fattest, mouse I have ever seen. It evades live traps and I hate to use killing traps. We even bought an expensive live trap when the cheaper models didn't work. We stocked the trap with parrot pellets and peanut butter but so far, the mouse has outsmarted us.

But my pets don't seem to be bothered by the mouse. Perhaps it is a pet of my pets? Well, to twist a phrase, 'the pet of my pet is NOT my pet'. Anyone have suggestions on how to trap and evict the mice?

Uh, a cat is out. Don't have time to raise a kitten and a full grown cat would probably not get along with the rabbit.

Would a killing trap hurt your other animals? If not, why not use it? It's a mouse, for pete's sake. If you had a pet boa constrictor it would be pet food. And the longer it stays the more you'll get attached to it and the more reluctant you'll be to kill it.

Hey. How about a boa constrictor? If you get a small one your other animals won't be in any danger. You could let it roam the house and eat all the mice it wants.

JK. Personally, I'd much rather have mice. Just the idea of finding a snake coiled in the bathtub one morning...even a non-poisonous one. *shudder*

Yeah, I'm a wimp. I'm already 'attached' to the 'smart mouse'. I did use killing traps in our apartment just before we moved to this house. If the trap kills cleanly, okay. One trap had only injured one of the mice I caught and I had to finish it off...with a hammer. It was messy and the image of that still makes me shudder. But it looks like we are running out of options. If it comes down to the human or the mouse, the human wins, bloody as it might be. I am going to look into poison now too...retching mouse goes off into a hole and dies. And decays. And we have smells. Sigh.