DEAD CAT ZEN is not the name of this e zine blog, but someone might like to use it.

Minor adventures in rural living...

My wife makes soap. She uses grease from cooking. Things that would otherwise clog up the pipes in this old house. Often she adds a few items like Matico herb to keep mold at bay.

Several bars of green soap were made. Placed in the bathroom, I used them for washing.

Then they began to vanish.

They weren't small. The dogs didn't have access to the bathroom. Currently, there are no small children living here to flush things down the loo. (There once was one.)

I set up a live trap, and several hours later, caught a nice, well fed female rat. A rat hungry enough to eat soap. I took it down a mile toward the wildlife refuge and let it go.

I'm not fond of rats, would have prefered set up a kill trap, but did not know how long the trap would be needed. Wandering around in socks tapping a kill trap didn't suit my sense of dread.

By the way, one distinct advantage in living out in the boonies, is that during the summer, if someone from the local Watchtower group comes forth with their little booklets, I just tell them to wait by the door for a few minutes. After a few minutes of fighting off mosquitos and deer flies, they leave.