Time: Sunday, 15 August
Place: The Fiendish Glow
Follows: One Woman's Trash...
Pen is real and is used with permission.
The vampbear is real and belongs to Brenda.
[The Fiendish Glow Office, Sunday, 15 August, 1400 Eastern Daylight Time]
"Rats?" asked Pen uncertain. "Here?"
"Rats," Brenda frowned, looking at the hole in the box that held a gross of toilet tissue. "Mice, at least."
"You're sure someone didn't just drop it on its corner?"
"I'm not sure of anything right now... but it does look like rodent damage to me. Besides," she said, glancing meaningfully at Pen's now-rebandaged wrist, "how else would you explain this box also falling off the shelf just as you walked by?" Somehow, the arctophile didn't think her compatriot would buy the story that the vampbear had simply hopped and pushed and hopped and pushed until the box teetered over the edge, timing it to fall just as Pen had come through the corridor... While the vampbear was eternally hungry and frequently mischievous, even he had his limits -- "Pride of Chukky" in the plush, he wasn't.
Pen gingerly felt the bottom of the box. Feeling nothing, she ran her fingers over the top of the shelf, checking also for any unevenness she might have missed two days before. The empty box suddenly jumped... and a stream of invective left her mouth as the cardboard container crashed to the floor and opened up, revealing telltale droppings inside.
"Yuck!" the two women said, running for rubber gloves, bleach, water, and heavy disinfectant.
"Wonder why I didn't see that before?" Pen asked herself.
"Because you didn't look?" she asked. Because you didn't want to see it, she speculated. "I hope it's not evidence of rats in residence here," Brenda shuddered, remembering the super-rat she'd spied outside the Glow at the beginning of War 9. "We'll get the boys to check it for us."
"Why bother them? You're not afraid of rats, are you?" her pixie-like companion asked.
Brenda shuddered in place of a nod.
1600 Eastern Daylight Time
"Think I have enough time to pick up a spare outfit or two?" Brenda wondered, looking at the sales advertisements in the Sunday paper. A glass of XO Remy at her side, she was finally calming down after checking 144 rolls of toilet paper for rodents and rodent damage, disposing of 83 of them, and getting the rat-dropping-infested cardboard disposed of safely.
Pen looked askance at the heavier woman. "This late on a Sunday afternoon? In Toronto? Are you kidding? Better to look in that tacky-stuff catalog of yours, instead."
Brenda garrumphed, plopped back down into her chair, opened her laptop, and turned to collect her e-mail. As she scanned the subject headers, two themes kept popping up. Devamped-vamps, and rats run rampant. It seemed that every faction's headquarters were being overrun with rats. "We need a Pied Piper," she said, to nobody in general.
"A what?" Pen asked. Brenda turned the screen to her and pointed out the number of War messages with the words "rat" or "rats" in them.
"Looks like the rats are invading Toronto... how's our stock of rodenticide?"
"You want to kill those poor, harmless, innocent little rats?" Pen asked sarcastically.
"How do you feel about scorpions sharing your bed with you?" her faction-mate asked the desert dweller.
"Touche," she replied, as Brenda picked up the phone and began to dial. "Who ya callin'?" she asked.
"City Department of Sanitation. I want to know why they haven't been putting out poison bait to kill the little health hazards."
"On a Sunday afternoon?"
"Believe me, city sanitation is a 24/7 proposition. Especially up here. You can bet your sweet @$$ that if it snowed, the streets'd be clear within 2-4 hours. On a Sunday. There's absolutely no reason they shouldn't take rat problems that seriously."
This is the Toronto Department of Sanitation. Our hours are Monday through Friday from eight AM to four PM. Please call back then. If you are calling with respect to an immediate sanitation emergency, please call (***)-555-3548. Thank you, and have a good day. ****
"Grrrrr," Brenda growled, hanging up and dialing the proffered emergency number.
This is the Toronto Department of Sanitation Emergency Line. If you are calling to report a sanitation emergency, please press '1' now. If you are calling to enquire about garbage pick-up and recycling schedules, please call (***)-555-8756. For all other enquiries, please call our main office at (***)-555-1245 any time Monday through Friday between the hours of 8:30 AM and 3:30 PM. Thank you, and have a good day.
Brenda pressed "1" and waited for someone to pick up.
This is a recording. All our operators are busy. Please stay on the line; your call will be answered in the order it was received. Your current number in line is: 4537901If you hang up now, you will lose your place in the line. Approximate waiting time is now: five days, six hours, and forty-seven minutes
BEEP
"@#$%&^*&^*&%^#%$%$&^*^%$%#$$#@%$@#$#@#!!!!!!!!!!!!" Brenda growled, slamming down the receiver loudly enough to wake the dead. The formerly-undead were, for good or ill, already awake and cruising around.
Grabbing her laptop, she typed and moused furiously for a while, bringing up no fewer than two dozen browser windows before reaching for the phone and dialing.
This is the New York City Department of Sanitation. Our hours are Monday through Friday from nine AM to five PM. Please call back then.
CLICK
"AAAArrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!" Brenda slammed the phone down yet again, before switching to another open window and dialing another phone number.
This is the New York City Department of Health, Bureau of Pest Control. Our hours are Monday through Friday from nine AM to five PM. Please call back then. If you are calling about a rat problem, we invite you to visit our Web-based FAQ at
http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/doh/html/pest/pest.html
CLICK ****
"GGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" the woman exploded, practically demolishing the receiver as she slammed it full-force into the telephone. "Can't even call anyone for their list of recommended pesticides on a weekend!!!!!!"
"Here." Pen reached over the other woman, pressed a few keys on the keyboard, and entered. In less than a minute, Abode Acrivat loaded up and deciphered a site with information on traps, trap use, baits, and poisons, and how to make one's abode very unpleasant for rodents. Fortunately, most of the precautions described were already in place, from the metal and glass storage containers to the clean, bleached-and-disinfected floors, to the metal door guards... Unfortunately, there was always the dumpster outside -- and there is no such thing as "perfectly rodent free" once the little buggers start coming around. The two women searched supplier after supplier on the Web, coming to one conclusion: the only chemicals, baits, and traps that were guaranteed to work on the pests were illegal in the province of Ontario.
The two women did the only thing they could. They went to the control room to call a staff conference.
None of the phone messages are real.
At the time of War 10, this was a real page at New York City's Bureau of Pest Control's Web site. They
are the folk who are responsible for de-ratting NYC.
Pest Management Regulatory Agency (located in Ottawa). At the time this was written, a guide to rodent control in Canada could be found in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format at http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/main/hc/web/pmra-arla/rats-e.pdf
At the time this was written, the New York City Department of Health, Bureau of Pest Control had a page on how not to attract rats at http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/doh/html/pest/ratno.html
From another then-available page on the NYC site:
"Just trying to kill them
all with poison never works. If there's real food around, the rats won't
even eat the poison. And even if they're all killed, more rats from nearby
move in right away. The only way to keep rats away is to take away their
food, water, a and shelter.
"We have worked out a plan to take
away the things rats need to live.
We're inspecting every building
and lot on every street in each targeted neighborhood. For every condition
that helps rats, we give out a notice of violation like a traffic ticket
and send a letter to the landlord or owner of the building or lot
requiring him or her to correct the problem.
"Ten days later, we
inspect again. If nothing has been done, the city cleans away all the
garbage that rats eat, and the junk and litter that rats make their homes
in, and then exterminates. The owner or landlord has to pay the bill.
"At the same time, we're also going after the rats in the sewers,
parks and other open spaces.
"After about four months in a
neighborhood, we should be finished cleaning the rats out. We will have
done all we can do to keep them from coming back."
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NEXT STORIES: I NEED A DRINK!,
EXPERIENCE IS A TERRIBLE THING TO
WASTE
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