Saturday, July 3, 2010

unexpected finds, unexpected uses.

bit of a double purpose post today,

I went to my preferred used book store and hit pay-dirt. I collected about 11 of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy books.. some I already had but not in that format and some I didn't have.. so now I have all of the William Morris, E.R. Eddison and James Branch Cabel volumes along with a few other assorted one offs.

I think on the whole I have about 1/3rd of the series.. some of them are just rare.. and cost more than I'm willing to pay for a paperback book....

I also went to Goodwill and found an Arkham House first edition of The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson.. which is much better than my normal haul of Forgotten realms and Dragon lance books that I'm never going to get around to being bored enough to actually read.


onto the Uses...

Living in an old farm house (or an old building of any sort) it's an unfortunate reality that you cannot keep 100% of wildlife out. It's something that dosen't make a lot of people happy but there really isn't a lot you can do about it.. except try and eradicate them when you can.

I kept noticing that my bars of hand soap were disappearing in my back bathroom. so I went looking for them and figured out that I had a rather large visitor who decided he quite fancied the zesty goodness of my bars of soap. so I baited a trap with it, and within a few hours had caught my intruder.. he is currently no longer among us.. but my soap is safe.

I wonder if Proctor & Gamble know of this use of their product?

7 comments:

Trey said...

Congratulations on the book haul! And what was your visitor--kobold? I've heard their fond of soap.

Lagomorph Rex said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lagomorph Rex said...

Well if we are talking World of Warcraft Kobold's.. as in really huge Rats.. then absolutely..

This wasn't quite Princess Bride sized.. but it was considerable... I guess he got fat from EATING ALL OF MY SOAP...

so now I have go dig a hole to put him in.

Gabriele Campbell said...

Heh, wildlife rats are very different from the pet store breeds. Esp. rattus norvegicus can get HUGE - we did our rat genome research on those, not the pet variants (which don't represent the original genome).

Lagomorph Rex said...

yeah this was a Norway rat.. I wound up catching a second one with the same bait.. I'm really hoping there aren't more... but if it's not these then it will be others..

If it's not one thing its another.. I trim back the trees and run the squirrels off.. and then the rats move in.. It's like I'm in the middle of a turf war..

Gabriele Campbell said...

What you need is a huge cat; a Maine Coon or some such. :)

Lagomorph Rex said...

I used to have a maine coon actually, but he figured out how to get the screen door open, and one day, decided to tangle with a Water Moccasin which was sunning itself in my yard on its way to the creek...

and well.. predictable results ensued...

The best cat I ever had was a solid black barn cat.. she was rangy and would spend days off in the bush hunting.. her favorite place to hide was black berry brambles.. She lived to be about 14 I guess and then some neighborhood dogs got her... Haven't had another cat since the two of them went.