Trafalgar Square 1974

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Why is this man surrounded by pigeons?

Mice

[No picture this time.]

Lois's dad bought a corncrib full of corn to feed their two horses. One Saturday he asked Lois and me to help him load the corn into his pickup truck so he could haul it home.

 

Lois and I started putting ears of corn into bushel baskets to carry them to the pickup. I picked up a couple of ears, and there was a family of mice, a mother and some babies. Scream! Lois's dad said we should continue loading the corn and not to worry about the mice. But they were everywhere.

 

We caught the farm carts and took them to the corncrib. They helped a little bit, first killing and eating some, then just killing some, then just playing with them, and finally they quit and went to take naps. And still there were what seemed like hundreds of mice. So Lois and I started picking the mice up by their tails and throwing them, hard, against the stone foundation of the corncrib. We killed about 50 of them that way, but many escaped, too.

 

The pickup finally was filled, and we left with her dad. He unloaded the corn at their house. We all had lunch. And then we went back for more corn. The stiffened mouse corpses were all over the places we needed to work. There were many more mice to kill as we finished loading the corn that afternoon. We even saw a rat, but we let that one get away, along with more mouse escapees.

 

That was a day I'll never forget. It wasn't fun. We just did our job the best we could figure out how to do it. If I don't know that I already did it, I would never believe that I could be such a killer. I hope I'm never haunted by all those little mouse ghosts.

Yellowjacket Warrior

One hot July, Bill donned his armor to avoid being stung while spraying the yellowjacket nest under the deck—parka, gloves, nylon net over his head and under his hat. But instead we called an exterminator.

That man sprayed the nest wearing short sleeves and shorts. These wasps only sting moving creatures. We stood still as statues with no armor and no stings.

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