...infestation grows

This pest is inherently evil taking on the appearance of good, ie., the running clothes draped carefully, limp with sweat and moldering on the bike handlebars to rot forever and in the used car towel ready to be used later to polish the car with its encrusted dirt.

To me:
I was raised within miles of a nationally certified wilderness area and that makes me more appreciative and tolerant of nature…somehow. I sympathize with squirrels that have made the big mistake of enduring as suburbia fills in around them. They are in the process of being trapped and deported; no matter that they were here first. Their eradication is aided by the daily commute as cars whip up an assorted road-kill casserole including a mishmash of squirrels, turtles, armadillo’s, frogs and the occasional possum.

And the polish... there are bottles of various car condiments everywhere. This gremlin snacks on car wax and tire-lube. Like salad dressing, one brand is never enough, and a various assortment accumulates along with caulk and duct tape.

The vermin has a strange proclivity for paint cans jumbled, un-stacked, opened and closed haphazardly, poured, spilled, restacked, and infected with rust.

It isn’t too bad until the nesting started. The garage rats unwind every extension cord and hose and carefully create masses of convoluted entanglements for what… or to aid who? whom?

Stop them at the garage or they spread. The nocturnal meanderings can invade the house at night, through the cat door, wandering through and randomly exchanging new light bulbs for old. That’s the only explanation for blow-outs only moments after installation. (I’ve been known to date the bulbs on the base, so I can see how fast he gets to them.) He stores a plethora of bad bulbs in the garage closets, intermingled with the good bulbs.

To me: I worry about the fox. He's shortlived for this world if he irks the husband. I watch the husband’s mole hunt escalate like the gopher hunt in Caddyshack. Bubble gum, traps, flooding, poison, animal feces, he’s tried it all. The cat is canonized each time she catches one to munch on, back feet first. The rest of us rescue and repatriate what’s left to the river park miles away. Gone Environ-mental…me

As yet, the husband is unconvinced of the presence of the garage gremlin, but I see. And as the world slumbers, the garage gremlin drags things out of the house to the garage—items you’d never expect to find there, toys, books, luggage, and toothpaste?

I’ve never discovered how to get rid of the vermin, I could call an exterminator, but that would involve a search for the phone book, the vermin spray, the sprayer and that would only be inviting the problem to worsen.

And truthfully, I think the exterminator is in on it.

I have learned the secret. To keep the beast at bay, all I have to do is suggest a house party. Somehow that is a signal that the pest needs tamed. While I advocate for help inside, the husband sidles outside and makes a valiant attempt to lasso and leash, train and domesticate.

Reality Bite: He assures me that it’s all in the event that a guest might ask for can of W-D 40 to loosen the lid on a jar of pickles.