Exterminator

Sometime between the end of high school (1996) and before my mission (late 1998), the city of St. Albert was infested by voles.

I'm not gonna lie; it was an adorable infestation.  Much better than southern Alberta's moth infestation of 1990.

I was living at home with my parents and most of my sisters.  I don't remember for sure which ones were at home and which weren't, because even the ones who didn't live with us visited often.  Jenn was married for sure, and I think Rob was living in Edmonton with room-mates (this was before he married Cindy).

Anyway, voles.  Voles in our house.

My sisters are all strong, independent, modern women.  They aren't the type who will stay at home all day relying on a man to run their lives.  Whenever any sort of rodent reared its little head, though, they became the stereotypical screeching damsel in distress jumping up on a chair to avoid the hideous creature.  It usually fell to me to dispose of the tiny invaders.

I had a hard time finding this picture with an actual mouse instead of a computer mouse.  Are modern women really terrified of computer mouses?

I killed my first mouse at the tender age of 12.  It was a joint effort between me and my father in Raymond.  We cornered it in the dining room, and I killed it with a pot.  Since then, the family started turning to me to dispose of pests.

During the vole infestation of the late '90s, I was working at Soda Jerks, and it was very common for me to come home after a long, greasy shift and find an overturned ice cream bucket on the floor with a stack of hard cover books weighing it down.  When I wasn't home, they were forced to catch the vole themselves, but then they'd just leave it there for hours until I came home.  I'd slide a piece of cardboard under the bucket, carry the vole outside, and chuck it.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same vole I was catching and releasing over and over again.

Sometimes, but far less often, I'd come home and find the overturned ice cream bucket, but without any of the books holding it place.  In these cases, it was a bee or wasp that they caught, and I'd be the one to dispose of it.  I didn't find this fair at all, because I was (and still am) terrified of bees and wasps.  And it was harder to slide the cardboard underneath the bucket without letting the flying daggers escape.

I know this is a '90s blog, and I resist talking about anything that happened outside of that decade, but I just can't tell this story without talking about modern-day Mary.  She manages a golf course in Canada's only desert, and regularly catches rattlesnakes that wander onto the course.  So that beats any rodent I ever killed, including the rats on my mission.