Working holiday

I spent a bit too much time having fun. But the weather was very hot at times so we went to the movies a lot. Got two rooms painted. Shell Cove was a strange colour that looked different on ceiling and walls which seemed to vary in colour between rooms. It looked pink in one room and yellow in the other. How is that possible?

I had never used a paint roller before, but it wasn’t so scary after all. Rollers leave a mottled finish on the surface that I dislike that the brush doesn’t, but you can cover a lot more area much faster with the roller. Over the years, we got into the habit of painting the walls, ceiling, cornices, and skirting board different colours, and wished to continue it. It looks good when done nicely, and when selling your property if your place looks good it will attract the punters. When I say different colours, the colours have to blend. The colours must be shades of one another. Perhaps a very, very light yellow on the ceiling, with a deeper yellow of the same hue on the walls and the cornice and skirting board in a mustard to make it stand out, but it too has to be of a colour that fits appropriately with the other two. So, painting the wall and ceiling was easy, but the cornices nearly broke my back in the painstaking work that it was with fine brush strokes and keeping a straight edge between the different colours.

S got me a video game for Xmas – Doom. I got hooked and spent hours at it. I shouldn’t have, but I was on holiday so I don’t feel too guilty. I don’t think Doom is a game you can win, and it was kind of scary if you let yourself become engrossed in it.

I was looking in the roof space for some cardboard packing boxes. After we unpacked from the move to Melbourne we had kept the old removalist packing boxes. We stored these fire hazards in the attic space. They store well when flattened out, and surprisingly after about 15 years in the attic still seemed remarkably well preserved.

While I was in the attic I saw about 4 or 5 rats climbing over the bricks at the far end of the house. There was no scurrying away when they saw me. Mamma rat and her children or friends stopped dead in their tracks, looked at me for a moment, looked away, and continued on their way as though I hadn’t been there and casually went about their business. A couple of rat traps were purchased; we got cages that captured the little blighters rather than killing them. Three were caught within two days, though we couldn’t decide whether they were baby rats or large mice. We released them away some distance from the house and they scurried into the bushland. They ran like the blazes.

I had been reading some material on the web and had made a few phone calls about rats and how they are controlled. One of the more interesting things one of the commercial contacts said to me was something along the lines of wherever you are at any time, on average, you will be within 10 metres of a rat, and it doesn’t matter where you live or work; they will be there. Some of the poisons used to kill rodents sound nauseatingly unpleasant. There seems to be no regard for animal welfare in their development. From preparations that cause rats to thirst to the extent they will drink until they are dead to chemicals that induce bleeding both internally and externally. These animals will suffer an agonizing death. My solution to remove them harmlessly will at least provide some nutrient to the local wedge tailed eagle or other wild life interested in eating them, but at least their death will be relatively quick. And if some of them get away to live in the wild, that’s fine.

Looking back I recall watching one of our cats sitting on the lawn looking up at a tree. This was a cotton palm tree. As an old cat, she was content to watch the rats. I didn’t know it at the time but these trees are a lovely refuge for rodents. One evening I crept up to the tree and could hear a lot of rustling between the large leaves that was more than just the wind blowing.