RATS !

Tenant: My dryer's broken.

Me: How do you mean?

Tenant: I press the buttons and it doesn't come on.

Me: That's a problem. I'll call the guy.

The dryer guy came. He pulled out the dryer, got behind the machine, and started banging around.

Dryer guy (from behind the dryer): The cable's been chewed.

Me: Chewed?

Dryer guy: Like as in something chewed through the wire. Look, I can repair the wire, but something chewed it. That might happen again if I fix it. Oh, and there's a kind of nest in the exhaust hole.

Weird. Really weird.

Me: Could a squirrel come in from outside or something?

Dryer guy: Look lady, I just repair dryers.

So I questioned the tenant. Did anything come into the apartment? Were they aware of any mouse-poo in the house?

Tenant: My pet rat escaped.

Me: Excuse me?

Tenant: Yeah, my pet rat. He's been missing for three days.

Me: Oh. I get it now.

The solution: I told the tenant to put out some food: cheese, grapes, crackers. Rat wine-and-cheese. She caught her rat and then made sure to keep it locked up. I sent her the bill for the repair of the dryer. She vaguely protested when she got it.

Me (in response): Really? You didn't see a connection there?

PLAGUE OF THE CRICKETS

Date: January.

Outside temperature: -20 degrees centigrade.

Time: Around 8pm. Dinner time as usual. My doorbell rings. It's a tenant.


Tenant : We're finding crickets.

Me : What? Inside?

Tenant : Yup. Ten of them today.

Me : That's weird. It's January.

Tenant : They make noise. At night when we turn the lights off. And they jump when we try to catch them.

Me : That's a problem.

So the inquest begins. A visit to the other tenant in the same building reveals a lizard and two snakes in an aquarium. Reptiles eat crickets.

Me to the lizard tenant : Did any crickets escape?

Lizard tenant : No. The snakes don't eat crickets. But we unwrapped a sleeping bag. We think a cricket must have been trapped in there from summer.

Heard through the floorboards : Downstairs tenant screaming. Stomping. Probably a cricket being stamped
to death.
                                                                             http://www.exterminationmont-royalinc.com/

I caught one. Careful not to crush it, I put the cricket into a pill container from the pharmacy. The next day I went to see Willy the exterminator. I dropped the dead insect onto Wellie's glass bug-display case which is also his counter.

Me : What is this?

Wellie : A cricket.

Me : What's it doing in one of my buildings?
                 
Wellie : It's from the pet store. This one's genetically modified. See? No wings.

Me : So there's no way this came out of a sleeping bag?

Wellie : It's -20 outside. This thing escaped. How many are you finding?

Me : Thirty so far.

Wellie : That's a problem. They're reproducing somewhere. In a crawl space or something.

Me : Crap. How do I kill them?

Wellie : Sticky pads. Around the baseboards.

I left with a hundred sticky pads. It took two weeks and a lot of sticking, screaming and stomping to get rid of the crickets. The sticky pads were very sticky. They stuck to shoes, socks, baseboards, sofa legs, and a tenant's pet rat.

Total bill : 65$ worth of sticky pads.
Total time required to get rid of the crickets : 2 weeks.
Total damages : psychological. To the affected tenants.
Outcome: No more crickets.


I could never prove where the crickets came from. The lizard tenant never admitted to releasing them. But my suspicions went into my little black book. It wouldn't be the last time I tangled with the lizard tenant.

CRACKHEAD FROM THE ALLEY: PART 1

7.30pm. I'm cooking dinner and my phone rings.

My third floor tenant (panicked): There was someone at my back door.

Me: Was it your roommate?

Tenant: No. He was knocking.

Me: Did you let him in?

Tenant: No. I think he was trying to break into the house. 

Me: Crap! Is he still up there?

Tenant: I don't know. He ran off.

A search of the garden revealed no crackhead. The back garden gate was open, though. One of the construction guys must have cut the chain holding the gate closed and didn't tell me to get a new one.

The result: one marauding crackhead from the alley looking around for something to steal.
To solve the problem: a brand new chain with two padlocks, a light with a motion sensor, and a new digital keypad on the front door for the tenants.

All things considered, the guy was pretty motivated. He made it past the following obstacles in the dark.  

Time to send those letter about how not to block the emergency exits!

Still : Aylwin tenants 1 - Crackheads 0.
Let's keep it that way  !