June 2008
Fleas
I am a fairly clean person. I like to think that I don’t live in squalor. Apparently, I’m wrong. VERY WRONG.
I live in a wooded area, and apparently because there are about 17 feral cats that live around my quadplex, that means there are about 1,000,000 fleas that live around my house. Well, I guess about a month ago, some fleas hitched a ride on in to the apartment. I started noticing whenever I would sit on the couch that I would get little bumps on my ankles.
I first devised a plan to capture and kill some of these fleas, in order to make sure they were in fact, fleas. I setup the (ingenious) home remedy of a suspended light-bulb over a pan of soapy water. I caught 10 or so fleas the first night. This confirmed that indeed, my problem is fleas.
Jarad, my roommate has not been bit by fleas yet and was perplexed by all this. I explained to him that there were on the couch, and he rarely sits on the couch for extended periods of time. This satisfied him and allowed for me to move on to stage two in the war.
I laid down a layer of Boric Acid in the living room in an attempt to at least kill the fleas that have made their home from my home. This seemed to have worked. What I didn’t think about, or forsee, was that they would, like the carnies they are, move their home to the next spacious dark place they could easily jump to.
This brings us to last week. The ankle bites and now, head bites had begun. This time, stemming from MY BEDROOM. NOOOO. This weekend I spent a good deal of time cleaning my room from top to bottom, vacuuming washing all my clothes, sheets, towels, and laying down a thick layer of boric acid in the room. Last night I set up my flea trap which consisted of a lightbulb in the middle of the room and the pan of soapy water again. I would literally go to my sink (which I had filled with some soapy water) and dunk my head in, scratch my scalp, and pull my head out to find a few fleas wriggling around in the water 3 times yesterday.
Now on top of all this, and also possibly the cause. I’ve had an on-again-off-again third roommate since January. A raccoon took up residence in my attic sometime in January. We have been complaining to our apartment complex (Oak Run Apartments in Austin Texas. DO NOT EVER LIVE THERE). They had done NOTHING to help with the raccoon problem except ONCE when they sealed up the hole he was using to get into the attic. All this successfully did was SEAL UP THE RACCOON in the attic. It eventually found a crawlspace allowing it to escape out of another hole in a neighbor’s roof.
I’ve repeatedly told the complex management they need to do something about this pest, they’ve done the bare minimum. A few weeks ago the placed a trap in the attic to catch it. It has now been trapped and escaped a total of three times. Last night was the latest trapping. I REALLY hope that it was taken care of today or else umm… I’ll be pissed? yeah
so needless to say, I had a hard night’s sleep last night, what with a light on in the middle of my room, a raccoon rattling a cage above me all night, and getting bit by fleas (probably fleas that originated from the raccoon) all night.
All of this aside, I’m seeing Islands play tonight. WOO
Michael Showalter Mixtapes
(for those of you using rss, there are videos embedded, so click “go to source” to see the post)
Michael Showalter Plug Awards Mixtape Doc, pt.1 from Super!Alright! on Vimeo.
Michael Showalter Plug Awards Mixtape Doc, pt.2 from Super!Alright! on Vimeo.
Also, very cool that Super!Alright! did the videos!