Pest Poison

Ever since we moved in we've been waging war against the local pests. In addition to the colony of ferrel cats that hangs out (and poops!) in our yard, we've also got a variety of spiders and an oppressive amount of ants. For the most part these bits of nature stay outside the house, where they belong. Occasionally we'll find a spider hanging out on the ceiling, and a number of times we've had medium sized ant infestations in isolated areas. These always fill me with a quiet (and sometimes less quiet) rage and I mutter curses to (and about) the ants while I methodically kill them all.

The ant infestations finally pushed me over the edge and I started calling pest sprayers. Ideally we wanted to go the green route, for a variety of good reasons. Unfortunately it takes up to 5 months for the natural deterrents to be fully effective, and the problems often get worse over these five months. Oh, and it costs twice as much, they need to spray twice as frequently, and it doesn't necessarily last in the heat (so your spray that should last 4 weeks wears off after 2). Hmm. Hello chemicals!

So the man came last week and sprayed. We've still seen a few ants, but today I saw some concrete evidence of deadly progress:

Yes, those are all Black Widows. Yum!

Dishes Be Gone

Today Blake brought over his ladder and we headed to the roof. Our mission: remove unwanted satellite dishes. For some reason the previous owners had not one (or even two) but four satellite dishes. Some may have been old, who’s to say, but we've got The Cable TV, so for our purposes they could all be filed under useless (and ugly).


None of the dishes put up too much of a fight. When got them all down we got to work unfastening the many feet of coax cable that was strung about the entire exterior of the house. In addition to collecting satellite dishes, the previous owners apparently collected TVs – one for every room in the house! When we were almost done I looked down to realize it was perhaps not the best job to opt out of wearing work gloves. Yum!

(Thanks for the photos Blake!)