Sunday, February 17

farewell possums, hello possums

A crowd of possums have taken up residence in the roof space. I thought of giving them some rat poison but they're cute animals, that is when they're not pissing and shitting all over the place, and mating, fighting and screaming in the ceiling above your bed.

Anyway, I used my background in systems analysis to draw up a grand plan, using masses of mothballs (which they apparently hate), and a 400-watt ultra-sonic screamer which I'm building. Ingredients for the screamer project:

  • one PC running audacity (to generate high-pitched waveforms then mix them with processed random animal sounds and punk bands)

  • one old hi-fi amp, connected to the PC

  • 15 metres of cable

  • two 400-watt horn tweeters, placed at the holes in the roof where the animals go in and out.





It can't fail. I just have to carefully time the activation for when the possums are out feeding. Otherwise, switching it on when they're already in the attic would trap them in there and torture them with noise, like in Iraq.

But as any general will tell you, you need a multi-pronged attack. So first of all I'm building some nesting boxes to hang in the trees, so the animals will have somewhere new to live after eviction. You see? Carrot and stick. What the world needs now.

So I'll be setting the alarm for about 3am one morning next week, before they come home from chewing gum trees. If there's no more posts here, assume I've fallen through the ceiling half-asleep in my pyjamas. I love the night life!



As it happens, there was a possum person in the audience at the concert on Wednesday, the female impersonator Harry Bumfreeze. If only I had asked him for advice, that might have helped. He is currently in New South Caledonia recuperating from an appendix operation, and sadly has had to postpone scheduled appearances in Scotland.







Nobody but the hard core ever comes to this blog now. If I can be bothered after rehousing the possums, I'll launch another exhibitionist blitz, with a genre-busting 3-D HNT.

8 comments:

  1. Albert? How fascinating! If you want tons of weird folk to come to your bloggie just stick a webcam on the possums. Possumcam! You'd clean up. Also, be good practise for when you become a hut manager and have a proper job at last! Hotboy

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  2. I say!

    I understand that they are using similar techniques in the UK nowadays to disperse groups of teenagers from loitering in areas that they are not wanted.

    MM III

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  3. Mingers! That's in fact where I got the idea.

    Hotters! Have you got them in the hut? Surely that would add to the vibe, as they lie around all day doing nothing.

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  4. PS the Possumcam idea could be a goer. 10%

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  5. bloody brilliant!
    will it work with theiving bastard street cats?? our fat balls of feline slob hide under the bed and let the revolting cat gang come in and spray if we open the windows even a bloody crack nowadays. tossers.

    i love the ideas here sweetness. have GOT to sort my act out and stop watching shite telly.

    also 3D hnt sounds ummmm. 3D.

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  6. Albert? Is is you? Why don't you sit meditating in the roof space? Just sit up there and they'll all run like hell! Hope this helps. Hotboy p.s. I could do that? Send bliss pills and travel expenses!

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  7. I say!

    How are the possum parties going?

    MM III

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  8. keda - what a delight to have you visiting! Ah, the lure of the electronic nipple. Is it the security of one's relationship that allows one to slack off and blob out? Then the only hope becomes staying in the relationship and trusting that boredom will eventually force one off one's arse and out the other side.

    Yes well, I've been a bit too busy to actually complete the wiring of the possum address system. The possum actually moved out, of its own free will, to the new possum nesting box. But my triumph was short lived. The next night it moved back in to the ceiling above my bed. In the short term I've adopted a more buddhist attitude to the whole thing. When I hear it coming home at 4 or 5 in the morning, I smile paternally, almost relieved that it hasn't come to any harm on its travels. As it scrapes around and makes its bed, I jam the spare pillow over my ear and settle down for some more kip. It actually feels a bit like the dorm at Portsmouth barracks when I was a schooolboy cadet; or like all the youth hostels when I did the world tour. The reassuring communal feeling of sharing a big bedroom with a crowd of anonymous room-mates.

    Actually, at Portsmouth we would be awakened at 6 a.m. out of our hangovers (oh the bliss of the cheap scrumpy) by a sailor's voice shouting over the P.A. - "wakey wakey! Hands off cocks! On with socks!" What did he mean?

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