[aephi alum]

There are wetlands behind my house, so in warm weather it's pretty much bug city. I'm not too squeamish to dispatch post-haste anything with six or eight legs. My husband calls ME to dispatch bugs!

Mammals are another issue... When I was in college, most of the dorms (including mine) had a problem with mice. One morning I walked into my suite kitchen, half awake, to fix breakfast, and Jerry the mouse went scurrying across the floor in front of me. I woke up in a hurry! I contacted the house manager, but he would only put out those sticky traps. Thanks, that's just what I need, a half-dead mouse stuck to a trap in my suite lounge, screaming for its life...

Cats (actually, all pets other than fish) were forbidden in the dorms, but a few people in my building had them anyway. Notice that the suites with resident cats never had problems with mice... I knew I should have gotten a cat!

I discovered a worse problem than the mice, the hard way. I was on my way back from lab at 3am one night when I heard a rustling in the bushes. I saw something the size of a cat, and I had just gotten through thinking "aww, a kitty" when the "kitty" emerged from the bushes and turned out to be a RIVER RAT!!! Those things are immense! I think I broke the sound barrier running back to my dorm...!