My Ongoing Pest-control Saga, Part I: The Sighting

I thought--since rain, other commitments, and fatigue prevented me from working on the house today--that I would update everyone on my pest-control saga. A month or so after we moved in, I was making my daily morning journey to the garage to pick out a shirt from a still-packed box. I was still a little groggy, so it was kind of surreal when I heard and saw a rodent booking across the cement floor. He (or she) ran up the track of my then-broken garage door and crawled into a hole in the ceiling's drywall. (I think you all are getting a good sense of the state of my garage in this post.) In my fatigued state, and feeling quite vulnerable in my underwear, the thing seemed huge. I thought to myself, Oh, sh*t, a rat. But afterward, I could not pin down its actual size. I seemed to remember it having a thin tail like a mouse, but then again it took a long time for that tail to slide into the drywall hole. I went upstairs and told my wife, and found myself cleaning and sterilizing the whole house. This I did after work. By that time, I had called Dave, the exterminator, or pest-control guy to be more politically correct, and accurate for that matter. Stay tuned to future posts to learn about the rest of our saga. Coming up next, Part 2: Dave's Master Plan.

Update: Part 2: Dave's Master Plan will not be published until 26 July 2006

I Believe It Is Some Kind Of Ivy That I Tore Up Tonight

With my wife not coming home until eight this evening, I thought I would take advantage of the late summer sunset and prune back some vegetation from the house. We recently had our pest-control guy over (a whole other future post) and he indicated that we should not have any vegetation touching the house because ants and/or termites like to use the tendrils as their own little Golden Gate Bridges to get to the house and consequently wreak havoc under the siding. Despite knowing in the back of my mind that a tenacious insect could just crawl up from the damn ground instead of using vegetation to bypass the siding, this information scared the guano out of me. So, I trimmed a grape vine back from the deck and cut back this gigantic bush from the house's siding. I noticed how the paint on the gutters was old and chipped and that reminded me that I have not cleaned the gutters since we arrived in September. Aggghh. Another project.

The biggest landscaping challenge came when I tried to pull some ivy away from the stone front path. At least, I think it's ivy. For the longest time, we thought it was Pachysandra, but in preparing for this post, I discovered that that is not true. The ivy is no where near the house, so it was not on the hit list that the exterminator gave me. But I was in such a plant-hacking frenzy that I turned my energy upon it and started pulling it away, first doing so without gloves. Then I remembered about poison ivy and realized that getting poison ivy on my hands would be really bad since, like most people, I use my hands for everything. I got a pair of gloves and continued to pull, using a tiny pair of hand pruners on the thicker tendrils. After about twenty-five minutes, the sun was setting and I had cleared about a 1' x 3' patch of it. I should mention that the ground the ivy covers is about fifty times that size and takes up half of our front lawn. I have considered mowing over it, but do not want to wreck the mower. I know there must be some sort of ivy-killing machine out there, but I am sensing that it is expensive.

Moving In

My wife and I having recently moved into our first house, I am now experiencing the mystifiying world of home imrovement, maintenance, and repair, not to mention landscaping and pest control. This blog will be about my journey into unfamiliar territory and will include every thumb struck by a hammer, every heavy object dropped on my foot. In the spirit of my inexperience with home reapir, I have decided to name this site after a tool I do not yet own and may never own. Welcome to Socket Wrench.