Rocky's Run For The Border

(Communing with nature, but with a dash of vengeance)

 

Somewhere, beyond the tree line that snakes along behind my house, there lives a lovely little female, a red-tailed fox, with a unique perk. This may be the only four-legged forager in America that can order in.

 

For the few years I've lived here, that fortunate fox has feasted on all my discards, all the pounds of food that an average single guy just can't ever seem to finish prior to the various expiration dates. Several times a week, I'd be out on my deck, lobbing groceries out at the green edge of (sic) civilization:  sliced bread, sliced cheese. Buns that shouldn't be hard and veggies that should. Bagels with a pedigree that would have to be measured in half-lives. The occasional doggie-bagged dessert, the one-day-too-long pizza slice, the A Fridge Too Far fetid egg or fuzzy chop meat. Those weird little mutant miniature corn cobs that keep dropping out of the Universe and landing in my Chinese food.

 

And the little vixen never seemed to mind that she's getting my hand-me-downs. I suppose that's one of the advantages of being a feral famale, along with the money you'd save on table silver. If you're the type of woman that can eat a live mouse, you're hardly likely to haughtily sniff at day-old Triscuits.

 

Lately, though, I haven't seen her around much, and now I know why. She's been dining in. Madame Fox no longer needs to pop over to Barry's Backyard Bakery & Ballast Disposal. Thanks to modern technology, mice are now just queuing up at her front porch and conveniently exploding.

 

Now you may think I'm lying, because I do that a lot, though only when I'm writing, or talking, or making hand gestures. But this "Mouse as Bottle Rocket" anecdote is knowledge I picked up directly from my friendly pest control person. You know him:  this is that white-uniformed guy who pops in every other month and walks around the house, armed with a hose attached to a metal cylinder, and acts like he's spraying stuff, which may or may not be some invisible but monstrously toxic Bug Elimination Mist that I'm afraid of because I can't see it or smell it. Eventually, he'll finish his rounds, smile, hand me an old mimeographed copy of something that, for all I know, describes my liabilities regarding the Louisiana Purchase, and then something automagically debits my credit card.

 

But what Beau Peste shared with me is this: to ensure that I have no infestation of rodents, he's installed a little black brick of mice bait beneath my house. Here's the strategy:  whenever some extraordinarily stupid or intensely bored mouse decides (for whatever rodent-oriented reason) to bite the brick, said mouse ingests the bait, prances along into the tree line and, ultimately, blows up.

 

You know … for a humorist, reality's just a big, endless gift, isn't it?

 

So, obviously, my vixen-y neighbor now has it made. The evening's main course just shows up and blows up – heck, these entrees even self-filet. Milady fox just sits by the stream, humming and knitting little kit booties, watching Fox News, and waiting to hear that familiar popping noise.

 

You may be thinking, "Mouse parts. Now that's a nasty diet." And you may be right. Or you may be humbled into shut-up-ed-ness by two words: Hot Pockets.

 

Cast the first stone, biped.

 

Another example of the difference in dining habits between two- and four-legged fauna is the squirrel (Scarfus maximus). I have many squirrels frequenting my back yard, because I own a bird feeder, which is apparently a device you buy in order to feed squirrels.

 

See, I thought I bought my bird feeder to hold bird food, which I buy in 10-pound bags that have pictures of birds on the bag, and which I take home and pour into the bird feeder, in order to attract birds, who will happily eat the bird food and then thank me, in that cute bird-like way of theirs, by decorating my deck with staggering amounts of ex-bird stuff that is basically the bird equivalent of a political speech.

 

Ha. Shows you what little I know. Squirrels showed up at my bird feeder faster than Gloria Allred spotting a neurotic celebrity.

 

I buy bird feed, I get squirrels. I can't imagine what kind of lawn guests I'd have if I'd brought home some actual squirrel food and laid it around for free. Jackals, maybe, or Obama's economic team. (Yeah, I know they are.)

 

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against squirrels, structurally. True, they're basically rats that can climb trees, but that's not their fault. If you want to file a design complaint, you need to go take it up with the creator of the squirrel:  Al Gore.

 

It's not the fact of the squirrel. It's their attitude. Squirrels have a right to eat, just like the rest of Al Gore's creatures. But I've watched these selfish little squirrels, these four-legged, entitlement-minded buffet boars. They'll grasp the side of my deck with their rear claws, hang upside down, and eat for twenty-nine consecutive days. They don't even stop to breathe.

 

The birds never get a chance, and have to go organize…form a disenfranchised victims support group, stage some kind of avian civil rights telethon, campaign for a federally-funded bird bail-out.

 

So, like any other spoiled brat who isn't getting his way, I hopped on the Internet to research ways to regain control of my bird feeder, to figure out how to modify Nature to make it fit my needs. And there it was:

 

Cayenne pepper.

 

Perfect. As it turns out, it's the capsaicin found in hot chiles that lands the punch. Squirrels hate it, but birds could care less about it. It was all explained to me on the Internet, by an online chemical repellent expert. Witness:

 

"According to [famous online chemical repellent expert], the ethmoid branch of the trigeminal nerve innervates the eyes, nose, and oral cavity. This is the nerve responsible for mediation of chemical irritation."

 

See? Could it be any obvious? Apparently, in the overarching scheme of things, birds are an ethmoid or so short. And as a famous television vixen might say, "It's a good thing."

 

So I blew a whole weekend spiking ten pounds of bird seed with ounce after ounce of ground red chiles. And believe me, you haven't lived till you've been stared at, standing in the grocery checkout line cradling sixty-five 2-ounce bottles of designer Cayenne Pepper.

 

And just in case you needed any further proof that the birds are gonna be okay, there's this from Famous Repellant Boy:  "there is no evidence that birds code capsaicin as an irritant at concentrations as high as 20,000 ppm, but mammals like squirrels, rats, and mice reject capsicum concentrations as low as 1-10 ppm."

 

Hmmm. Maybe the brick-biting mice will eat the peppers, too. Then my fox will get to enjoy some Jalapeno poppers. (and I'm sure you saw that joke coming from about 20,000 ppm away)

 

See, it's all in the design. Reassuring, isn't it? This is all "big picture" stuff. It's all a part of Al Gore's plan.

 

And then I heard what I could've sworn was a Mariachi band.

 

I looked outside. And there, dangling upside-down from my bird feeder, were four squirrels wearing Haz-Mat masks and a poncho.