If I'm lion, you dirty rats are dyin'
Must-have items on today's shopping list: Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream (half gallon now only $8.99!), a big ol' bag of Halloween candy and mountain lion urine.
What, you're shocked?
Me, too. I can remember when a half gallon of Blue Bell was $2.99, or on sale for 3-for-$5. That's at least a dollar less than what they're getting for a pint now. If my math is right, there are four pints in a half gallon. Shouldn't a pint be about $2.25? Of course not. That would make too much sense, and, apparently, way too little cents.
What, that's not what shocked you? Must be the Halloween candy. The best bargain in town this week has to be leftover Halloween candy. One of those giant gut-buster bags of bite-sized morsels such as BabyRuths, Whoppers, KitKats and Butterfingers, my personal favorite, are marked down to half-price now. That means only 25 or 30 bucks a bag.
Now that my Halloween day-and-night candy binge that resulted in no sugar rush but a gut ache that doubled me over so bad I could barely crawl to the candy trough has pretty much subsided, I'm ready to dive back in. Besides, it's a fun little game to dig through the giant pile of empty candy wrappers and try to find one lone bite-sized killer Butterfinger morsel that thinks it will survive. "Ha," I say.
Oh wait, it's the lion urine that shocked you. OK, I finally get it. Actually, it's mountain lion urine, does that help? No? Well, here's the deal. You know how you take your vehicle to one of those oil change places.
If you're anything like me (and for your sake let's hope you're not), all you want to do is get the oil and filter changed, reject all the extras (windshield wiper blades, a new automatic low tire pressure warning device, etc.) and get out of there.
I always dread the moment when the oil change store manager walks slowly toward me holding something -- usually the engine air filter and the cabin filter -- with a sad look on his or her face that tells me one of two, or both of two things: No. 1: He or she moonlights at the funeral home. And, or No. 2: I'm about to dig a little deeper into my wallet than I expected.
In this case, it was the air filter/cabin filter scam, uh sorry, emergency. I was ready. I planted my feet, tensed my body and prepared for the worst, much like a baseball catcher working with a wild knuckleballer with the bases loaded.
He got me anyway. "Rats," he said. "Yeah, rats," I said back, still in my catcher's ready-for-anything defense and replied, "I guess they're so filthy I better not drive another mile without shelling out for new filters." "No," he said, "Rats! Rats are eating your air filter and your cabin filter. See the little teeth marks."
I couldn't see any teeth marks and I was about to get smart with him and say, "I thought rats had big teeth" when he beat me to the punch. "We recommend lion urine, probably meaning (upon research later) mountain lion urine. Silly me, when he said lion urine, I assumed he meant lion urine.
"OK, when we finish up here I'll just drive out to the zoo and see if any of the lions will be willing to fill a little paper cup for me," I said. "No need," he said. "They have it on Amazon. Just take the cap off and strap a bottle under your hood. That'll take care of the rats."
He's right. They do, but I've got a better idea. I'm going to tape a giant bag of bite-sized Butterfingers under the hood. The rats will eventually get bloated and sick and just waddle away from the candy.
I wish I could do that. Let me see if I can find one more piece of candy hiding in the stack of wrappers.
What ever happened to good old-fashioned rat traps? Seems like a lot less smelly, and perhaps messy alternative. Imagine the stink of your car after your mountain lion pee sloshes out all over your engine and boils fumes into your cabin. Hmmm. Nope!
Posted by: Daphne Correa | 04 November 2022 at 06:08 PM