Dining Out at the Critter Cafe
I have a critter problem.
The specific variety of critter that's troubling me? I don't know.
I know only its aftereffects, the holes bitten in our trash cans and the smallish, slightly oblong droppings the villain leaves behind.
It's tough to identify the culprit because our backyard is a veritable menagerie of suburban wildlife, playing home to squirrels (both black and brown), skunks (and/or neighbors experimenting with newly legalized recreational substances), outdoor cats (enough to drive Jonathan Franzen insane), procreating rabbits (at least one of whom dug such a deep a hole for her young that there's now a sinkhole in the grass) and possums or opossums (I don't know the difference). We've even seen coyotes nearby.
"What's eating our trash cans?" I asked the exterminator, also known as my husband.
"A squirrel or something," he said with a shrug.
He doesn't care, I thought with shock. Then I realized that he can't care. Because if he cares, it becomes his problem. He's had to deal with mouse problems and squirrel problems and ant problems, and wherever there's a critter problem, the solution often leads to a "disposing of a dead critter" problem, from which he quite naturally recoils. It became clear that, until I'd been thoroughly and properly vanquished, the garbage cans would be my issue.
As a gesture of goodwill, my husband suggested buying wolf urine and putting it everywhere in the backyard.
"Where on earth do I get wolf urine ?"
"Online," he answered.
...continued
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