RATTING
OUT YORKIE TERRORISTS by
Cliff McKenzie, Editor
vigilancevoice.com
GROUND
ZERO PLUS 1325 DAY--New York, NY, Thursday, April
29, 2005--Our
house is empty of a four-pound Terror Hunter.
We are now at the mercy
of four-ounce mice.
We are now
at the mercy of four-ounce mice
Sammy, our daughter and
son-in-law's teacup Yorkshire Terrier, left a couple of days
ago after spending two weeks in our East Village fifth-floor
walk up.
He normally lives in
the Bronx, about a 45-minute subway ride away to the end of
line on the 1 Train. When he comes to the East Village, he's
gun shy at first because the sidwalks are jammed with people
and street sweepers sneak up and startle him with their whirring
brushes and gunning gears.
Our daughter and her
hubby went to Italy for a vacation that coincided with the death
of one Pope and the election of another. Our mission was to
guard and protect Sammy--all four pounds of him.
We were vigilant because
his buddy, Jake, the second Yorkie in the family, was murdered
by a 95-pound Rottweiler earlier in the year. We didn't want
anything to happen to Sammy on our watch.
Jake, Sammy's 'brother'
was murdered by a Rottweiler
While concentrating our
efforts on protecting Sammy from street sweepers, Pit Bulls
and other large, hungry New York street dogs, we neglected to
be alert to the internal danger of mice--rats and other New
York vermin that haunt almost every apartment dweller in this
city where buildings stand a hundred plus years old.
The mice and rats own
this city, as they do any urban community. Humans vaingloriously
battle them, but no matter how much one tries to expunge them,
they gnaw their way back into your life, or the next tenants',
or their children or great grandchildren. After all, the mice
and rats predate humans and will be here long after we've wiped
ourselves off the face the earth.
Sammy, we forgot, wasn't
just a cute little sixty-four ounce dog everyone oohed and ahhed
over when we walked him about the city, or tucked him in the
carry bag where his curly golden haired head peeked out and
his wee black snout nervously sniffed the air. He was a Sentinel
of Vigilance when it came to rats and mice.
Yorkies, we found after
scouring the web for information on their history, were bred
as "ratters."
The English probably
gave up on cats as we have. They elected to breed dogs to kill
rats and mice.
Imagine a beautiful Yorkie
teacup strutting into your living room holding the mangled body
of a rat or mouse in his glistening fangs, waiting for you to
pat his fluffy flaxen head and coo, "Good, Sammy...you
got a nasty, ugly, bubonic-plague-ridden rat...what a wonderful
puppy."
Then you wipe the blood
off his grinning face and he leaps up into your lap and gives
you a big lick on your face....ugggggghhhh....
Proof
of Sammy's vigilance came after he left
Well, it seemed oxymoronic
that such a lovely, friendly, almost cartoonish type dog would
in fact ferret out the vile vermon of a household, but then
when you are desperate to protect your children and family from
creatures of the night who rule the dark with beady eyes and
flicking whiskers as they stick their snouts into your food,
you would sic anything on them to sleep in peace and quiet knowing
the Rodent Terrorists were being held at bay.
My wife and I didn't
realize that Sammy was indeed holding the mice in frozen fear
when he was visiting. Proof of his vigilance came after he left.
Like the people in England,
we have a cat. He's about nine pounds and thinks he's human.
He constantly meows for food and attention, but, he never goes
after a mouse. A mouse could run over his head and he'd probably
not blink an eye.
That means we battle
the mice with all kinds of traps--glue one, baited ones, metal
traps and even bags of poison tucked behind the refrigerator
and stove. Like any New Yorker we knew about stuffing steel
wool in any opening, hoping that the mice would consider it
barbed wire and do a turn-around and head to our neighbors'
apartments.
We even had a special
exterminator come and lay booby traps everywhere.
A
four pound Terror Hunter kept the rodents at bay
Nothing works.
Except Sammy.
When our daughter came
back and took Sammy from us, of course we missed him. He was
such a cute little guy.
But a day after he was
gone, there the evidence was--rodent droppings on the stove.
We really hadn't noticed
the absence of signs of mice until their excrement suddenly
appeared following Sammy's departure.
"Sammy....where
are you?"
"Aha," we decided,
"the mice had taken a hike because Sammy's tiny feet must
have sounded like Nazi goosesteps to the children, mothers,
fathers and grandparents of all the mice who thought they might
feast for free at our house.
"Beware," they
must have squeaked, "the McKenzie's have a Yorkie ratter.
Let's lay low for a couple of weeks. No reason to take chances.
We'll eat out at the neighbors for a while."
Well, sadly we're back
to being haunted by the mice.
Our Sentinel of Rodent
Vigilance is happily at his home in the Bronx.
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