Let’s talk about critters. Okay, let’s up the ante to varmits (AKA vermin, for those of you raised north of the Mason-Dixon line) in May of this year a warm steady breeze swirled around the backyard and my sister (who has lived in “these here parts” for longer than I have) said as light as a sprite , “the critters will be coming out soon” and then she departed for higher ground.

CRITTERS: The first critter I ran into was a pernicious ground hog the size of the GoodYear blimp. He was ‘a-fixin’ to ravage a young tender (green) thing in my garden. I ran out of the house with words retching from my gut that only very old wizen sailors should know and even they might blush at the thought of such verbal carnage.

Arms swinging like a Tilt-a-Whirl I attempted to use size, aggression and fury to intimidate my opponent. His eyelids fluttered as if thinking he might look up and surmise the threat, but instead kept gnawing and assaulting my newly planted delphiniums.

I stopped abruptly at about four feet away when a glint of springtime sunshine bounced across his front fangs like a scene from movie “The Great Race” every time Tony Curtis smiled. It occurred to me the critter was waiting for me to get within mauling distance.

I screamed, “I’m gonna shoot you, you %$#@#$% (feel free to fill in your favorite adjectives for this sort of encounter). I swear to God, I am going to get my 22 and blast you to kingdom come (wherever that is).” That’s when I realized I was morphing into Daisy Mae Clampett (oh, alright, morphing into Granny Clampett). One year here in North Carolina and I was ready to shoot a critter. Never mind that I don’t even own a rifle. I was out for revenge. Heaving several large copper bottom sauce pans in the general direction of the garden, I was delighted to see the ground-HOG waddle away and sequester himself under the garden shed

Not to be bettered, I grabbed a broom and ran toward the black hole where he had disappeared. I poked. I made long sweeping swings into the dark crawl space. That is when the residue of my New York savvy brain surfaced and shouted:”Yo, shitforbrains! Hello? Crawl Space? Things that crawl live in there and can grab onto the pole, climb out and attack you. Rule number one of street-smarts-survival: give up your valuables and run the other direction.” I went into the house.

VERMIN: Webster’s states that vermin are collectively noxious or troublesome small animals or insects. Within days of the “Attack of the Crazed Critter” I ran into the local vermin. (No not the vermillion necked vermin down at the All-You-Can-Guzzle-Gulp-or-Grab-Saloon) This was a more sinister group and they had hundreds of peeps. There were (and still are) flying vermin…yellow jackets..in the &^%$# ground! I ask you what kind of self-respecting bee lives underground? Answer, the kind that also like the shade of my zucchini plants and the moist loam I bought at Home Depot at a premium, thank you very &^%$#$ much. Needless to say, several cans later of ‘KILL ALL’ I was wheezing ankle deep in a carpet of seizuring yellow jackets. I have not checked the zucchini in a month for fear of reprisals.

Next was the red earth worm the circumference of a kabasi. “Wow,” I gushed, “look at that, they really grow ‘em big down here. Well, that’s good for the soil, good for the flowers, good god it’s moving like a &^%$%# side-winder. SNAKE!” I now boomed to no one. I beg you, dear raeder, to understand. I like a lovely green garter-garden snake as much as the next girl scout, but we don’t just have vegetarian snakes down here, we have poisonous demonic vicious, fanged, venom-ators in scaly skin.

I caught the squiggling vermin on my metal rake, lifted it up high, like Moses leading the Israelites through parted waters. I steadied my feet and using my best lacrosse form flung the snake towards my goal…the other side of the fence. It shot across the air like a piece of rusted rebarb. As noted in other tales of mine referencing critters and vermin it can be duly noted that my immediate goal is to rid my marked turf of any obstreperous outsiders. And these automatic impulses are often ill planned. So, I will admit that as Sir Snake headed airborne through the woods a small voice (again, with the New York accent, already) said, “That’s right throw him over the fence, I am sure he and his older brother will never find their way back here.

CRITTERS AND VERMIN TOGETHER: There is one place that critters and vermin love to dwell in harmony, albeit an opus to kill me slowly and softly. Donde esta? Esta en the melting pot, the DNA soup, the swimming pool. In the last few weeks I have fished out (and given flying lessons to): warty toads, yellow-bellied slime drenched frogs, a snapping turtle (well, that puts the kibosh on any skinny dipping in the dark, I hope to shout!), snakes (can you say diamond backs?), spiders with pretty colors on their huge bodies and LONG hairy legs, worms, crickets, mice, wasps, fireants (one bit me on the jaw and my entire face went numb. The site of the bite was a lump the size of a CD which finally subsided leaving a lovely tone of “purple-browny” as my astute grandson was so quick to point out), an injured bird (no I did not jetison him over the fence…I do have a modicum streak of humanity under my permanent case of the willies!), bumble bees, mosquitoes the size of a Pontiac, poisonous centipedes, rolly-pollies (the insect version of the armadillo), and a massive, and I might suggest an aptly named, dragonfly.

It is a strange world when the streets of Bed-Sty and the South Bronx seem safer than your own backyard. But in the 8 years I lived at 96th and Lex and worked for the City Department of Aging in all lower income neighborhoods, I never had the queasy feeling that every single thing out there wanted me dead. But just so you don’t think I am going all ‘Rambo and DuPont’ on Mother Nature out here (and you are sicking Animal Protection on me as we speak)…I am fervently researching natural ways to keep the aforementioned wildlife and my ‘personhood’ in different realms of the Animal Kingdom.
This is what I have come up with. A young man at the corner “Gas ‘N Go” suggested I use goat piss. He said, and I quote, “Since I got me a goat I ain’t had no trouble with snakes ur other vermin.” Hey, why argue with success? Now the question at hand is do you rent a goat by the hour and pump him up on Aquafina, or do you just chase him around someone’s yard with a bucket?

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