supermouse (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
supermouse) wrote2012-11-14 07:56 pm
supermouse) wrote2012-11-14 07:56 pm
Entry tags:
Things that have happened.
Palaeography again, this time Medieval. Before spellynge, backe in the time of 'ye'. Random handwriting wasn't any easier to skim back then than it is now.
I have a bike! It is purple and I have no photograph of it. I'll do something about that the next time I go out on it. Random also has a bike, which is a brown Landrover bike with a wicker basket and three gears. It looks rugged and simple and ready for pootling around in the 1930s. Mine is more cyberpunk. I'm looking forward to when we go out together.
Hatter brought a rat back last night, which was exciting. As far as I can tell, he jumped it and managed to grab it by the neck in such a way as to trigger it's 'being carried by mum' reflex, as it was perfectly docile until he let it go in the upstairs hall. Thanks be to the gods, it ran into the bathroom and not any of the other directions that would have made last night so much more complicated. It was a good, big healthy rat.
Rats are vermin. If you catch one, you can't let it go. It's not only illegal, it's monstrously unfair to anyone living close by. They carry diseases which can disable and kill human beings. So, in the next part of the story, the rat dies.
So, first of all it ran up the inside of the radiator cover and screamed. Hatter seemed quite keen to have another go at it, so I left him to it for a while, but when I opened the door to check, he was more nervous than enthusiastic. Rats can be quite dangerous to cats, something Random pointed out to me and which really I should have remembered - I was used to Moth, who despatched rats quite casually until arthritis slowed her down. Anyway, he wasn't getting anywhere, so I let him back out and got some tools to get the rat myself.
There then followed a rather long sequence of me using a wooden sword to poke it out of places so I could try to grab it with a disability aid grapple, to put it in a metal bin. It was screaming the whole time and leaping at me, biting the sword and grapple with some strength. It also spent a while sitting on the pipes under the sink, hissing, screaming and attacking anything that came near it. You know how people in the middle ages would go out with spears and hunt wild boar? I cannot imagine that - just grabbing a rat was difficult and dangerous enough and they're tiny and quite fragile.
I got it in the bin just as Pol got home, and borrowed an air pistol he kindly loaded for me to finish it off. I did manage to shoot it in the back, basically crippling it so that it couldn't jump, and allowing Pol to then come in close with a more powerful rifle with better pellets for hunting, and finish it off with a single shot to the head. I would rather have killed it with a single, humane shot but it wasn't really possible - a healthy rat would have climbed *up* the air rifle, possibly grabbing fingers on the way, and then we'd have been back to square one.
We need to get rat traps, really. Also, Hatter is no longer allowed to use the cat flap. He has to be let in and out so we can check him for cargo.
I have a bike! It is purple and I have no photograph of it. I'll do something about that the next time I go out on it. Random also has a bike, which is a brown Landrover bike with a wicker basket and three gears. It looks rugged and simple and ready for pootling around in the 1930s. Mine is more cyberpunk. I'm looking forward to when we go out together.
Hatter brought a rat back last night, which was exciting. As far as I can tell, he jumped it and managed to grab it by the neck in such a way as to trigger it's 'being carried by mum' reflex, as it was perfectly docile until he let it go in the upstairs hall. Thanks be to the gods, it ran into the bathroom and not any of the other directions that would have made last night so much more complicated. It was a good, big healthy rat.
Rats are vermin. If you catch one, you can't let it go. It's not only illegal, it's monstrously unfair to anyone living close by. They carry diseases which can disable and kill human beings. So, in the next part of the story, the rat dies.
So, first of all it ran up the inside of the radiator cover and screamed. Hatter seemed quite keen to have another go at it, so I left him to it for a while, but when I opened the door to check, he was more nervous than enthusiastic. Rats can be quite dangerous to cats, something Random pointed out to me and which really I should have remembered - I was used to Moth, who despatched rats quite casually until arthritis slowed her down. Anyway, he wasn't getting anywhere, so I let him back out and got some tools to get the rat myself.
There then followed a rather long sequence of me using a wooden sword to poke it out of places so I could try to grab it with a disability aid grapple, to put it in a metal bin. It was screaming the whole time and leaping at me, biting the sword and grapple with some strength. It also spent a while sitting on the pipes under the sink, hissing, screaming and attacking anything that came near it. You know how people in the middle ages would go out with spears and hunt wild boar? I cannot imagine that - just grabbing a rat was difficult and dangerous enough and they're tiny and quite fragile.
I got it in the bin just as Pol got home, and borrowed an air pistol he kindly loaded for me to finish it off. I did manage to shoot it in the back, basically crippling it so that it couldn't jump, and allowing Pol to then come in close with a more powerful rifle with better pellets for hunting, and finish it off with a single shot to the head. I would rather have killed it with a single, humane shot but it wasn't really possible - a healthy rat would have climbed *up* the air rifle, possibly grabbing fingers on the way, and then we'd have been back to square one.
We need to get rat traps, really. Also, Hatter is no longer allowed to use the cat flap. He has to be let in and out so we can check him for cargo.