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A Tribute To The Dead Ones
I may not have been born in the zoo but these days, I feel like I live in one. Where I stay, there are a ton of household pests that come to wreak havoc and misery in my life.
First, there exists crickets in my kitchen. How many exactly, I am not sure but judging from the din they cause, my guess would be around 500. I don’t know why people say crickets chrip because the ones in my house scream. It’s gotten to a point where I’m used to it such that I find the kitchens in other houses eerie-ly silent.
Then we have lizards, and an entire colony of them too. A few months ago, well maybe many months ago, my dad and I embarked on a project of setting lizard traps all over the house. To date, we have put out more than 15 traps and none of them have disappointed us so far. Some traps even managed to catch two lizards. The sight of the rubbery creatures struggling to break free from their sticky doom is toe curling and hair raising. Simply put, it grosses me out to no end.
Now this wouldn’t be a problem on most days as I would tell my dad, via my mum of course, to clear the trap so that I can enter the kitchen without having my stomach churn. The situation gets tricky now as my parents are away on holiday and I cannot bring myself to do the deed. So I’m left with festering lizards which then attract a million ants, the sight of which also makes me skin crawl and so I bring out the industrial strength insecticide and gas them all to death. But my life is not one that is easy and now I’m faced with dead lizards and dead ants.
Last night, I heard a rat biting its way into my house. If I stared really hard, I could even see the brown nose sticking out of the hole it has made. Before anyone starts giving me Ratatouille anecdotes, please don’t, because I did not find the rats cute and the entire movie, including the anorexic-looking food taster, freaked me out. In my panic-stricken state, I ran to do my research on home-made remedies for unwanted rats. Yes, even in the most dire of situations, there is always time to consult Google. I found out that rats dislike ammonia and that household bleach contains about 25% ammonia. With the help of JV, actually he did the work while I shrieked helpfully from the safety of the kitchen table, we poured about half the bottle of bleach into the hole and then taped the lid from a can of Pringles over it. I am aware that rats can bite through anything and so the plastic lid will hardly suffice as deterrence, but in our defense, we were desperate.
It gets even crazier. Years back, my mother found a baby python snoozing in the unruly patch of grass that we call a garden. I dare not think of how it came to take a nap in my garden of all places because then I’m faced with the frightful possibility that the mother-python actually came and laid her egg right outside my doorstep. The baby python must have had ribbons on its scales because for some reason, my mother found it too cute to kill and decided to set it free at the nearby field. Should any of the primary school kids who always play soccer there get swallowed by a ten-metre-long python in future, I would hold my mother responsible.
I’ve not even gone on to talk abt the cats that are forever taking a dump in my garden, though I can’t blame them since the garden looks like an oversized kitty litter, or the roaches, centipedes or slugs.
Contrary to the impression I have given here, I do not hate animals. I am not in love with them but hatred would also be far too strong a word to use. I accept their importance in the eco-system and I also believe that they, being God’s creations, have a right to exist on earth. Just not in my house.
I think that these creatures are attracted to where I live largely because the people living in this place often behave less than human too.
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