Okay, warning here, this is not a pretty blog rant today. In fact it will get a bit gruesome at times. My cat gets the gold star this week. He has caught three mice, three different days, and left them for us in the middle of the kitchen. Of course these are little tiny baby mice that are out in search of the Mom or Dad we caught in the traps last week. I mean, I am not sure if these guys even had their eyes open yet....but they are closed now. We live in the city of Baltimore and have a rodent problem outside. Rats. City Rats are bad and Baltimore city rats are the worst. It is a new thing for me to learn about because I am for the most part a country gal. Raised in a small town in rural America. I was not aware that when you fill up the 'rat hole' that is in your fence, you fill it up with steel wool pads and broken glass and mix that into the cement so that way the rats have to eat thru that to tear up their insides...before they get inside. They chew thru cement no problem, the rest is just to slow them down a bit. All of our animals are very good at catching the rodents that wander into the yard and house. We have Figaro our tuxedo cat getting the smaller ones inside and we have Tigger our tripod Dal getting them outside. She is awesome at cracking the baltimore city rats neck. And she keeps a vigilent look out at the perimeter of the fence in the evening. Watching the goings on in our alley - sometimes it is like a party there - a rat party, I mean. I sure wish the city would do more about this problem, but alot of it falls on people that don't know how to put their trash in trash containers and not just at the end of the alley in a bag. Why do people have no brains? Tigger has caught three rats in the three years we have been here. Not a lot you say, but more then some dogs in their life. My other dog Mercury is a coach potato and doesn't move fast enough. Tigger has great eyes,nose and determination. And as soon as the noise of the hunt occurred we were outside to take the filthy animal from our darling gal. She cracked its neck brillantly. And got a treat that night from Daddy. It is a never ending battle against them. The mice population is going down fast though....