Comments on: Mobile home rat hoarder who lived with 300 furry friends will be evicted

By: Donald Petersen

Donald Petersen — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 01:04:00 +0000

“Manufactured housing,” please.

By: dean_544

dean_544 — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 07:05:00 +0000

I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 17:37:00 +0000

And then you can eliminate the gorillas with wild poachers imported from Africa!

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 10:07:00 +0000

‘Village’ is popular, too, in the wheeled home set.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 09:24:00 +0000

UK pedantry. To me the pluralised ‘estates’ sounds more like a gated community – no doubt abutting a golf course with free membership thrown in. The singular ‘estate’ is your common or garden term for most suburban housing developments whether private or council. The term has stuck to the council estate but has been dropped from most private (non-gated) developments. But that could all change with the inner-city gentrification of old council estates.
Birch Tree Estates is not the same as The Birch Tree Estate.

By: David Horton

David Horton — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 03:31:00 +0000

He? Did you read the story?

By: Incipient Madness

Incipient Madness — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 03:07:00 +0000

Just be glad he was accidentally breeding rats. Mice are so much worse. I’ve cleaned up after infestations of both. Mice are much worse.

Best biological control for rats is a team of ferrets and terriers that were raised together.The ferrets flush out the rats and the terriers kill them. Leave a cat behind to kill off the crafty rats.

By: Missy Pants

Missy Pants — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 02:57:00 +0000

BEN!

http://youtu.be/YTKNahASSDI

By: MarlboroTestMonkey7

MarlboroTestMonkey7 — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 02:30:00 +0000

You can’t rely on the weather, it’s better to exterminate the snakes with snake-eating gorillas.

By: eldritch

eldritch — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:26:00 +0000

You’d be surprised where a snake will end up to escape the cold. When you turn off the heat, those pythons are going to crawl into the most unlikely of places, many of them in hidden nooks and crannies, possibly even ending up underground. And they can remain in torpor for months without ill effects.

So unless you are very careful to collect all of them before any try to escape the cold, you’ll have hungry pythons coming out of hiding in a couple of months.

By: Romeo Vitelli

Romeo Vitelli — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 01:15:00 +0000

Animal hoarding can be a major problem but it really affects the neighbourhood when rats are involved.
http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2008/08/no-progress-in-la-rathouse-case.html

By: Donald Petersen

Donald Petersen — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:41:00 +0000

The double-wide aluminum palace of my youth was located in the “Rios Canyon Mobile Manor.” I had to check Google Street View to confirm, but yes, it self-identifies thus to this day.

Alas, I was not “to the manor born.” We lived in a rented house until we moved to the ~~trailer park~~ mobile manor shortly after my third birthday.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:14:00 +0000

‘Estate’ is UK for ‘development’, thus The Projects are Council Estates. Using it in the US would seem to be a gambit to make it sound ritzier.

By: Stefan Jones

Stefan Jones — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:11:00 +0000

Simple solution: Capture a bunch of those invasive Burmese Pythons down in Florida and let them loose in the trailer. Then when all the rats are gone, turn off the heat and open the doors and let the Wisconsin cold take care of the snakes.

By: Mr. Spocko

Mr. Spocko — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:07:00 +0000

And by WILLARD I meant Willard Mitt Romney.

By: Mr. Spocko

Mr. Spocko — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:06:00 +0000

WILLARD!

By: Stefan Jones

Stefan Jones — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:58:00 +0000

It sounds more dignified than “cheap land by the freight line.”

By: fuzzyfuzzyfungus

fuzzyfuzzyfungus — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:46:00 +0000

http://vet.tufts.edu/hoarding/ has some interesting further reading about this sort of thing.

Short version: It turns out to be amazingly difficult to get people to recognize that they’ve gotten themselves in over their heads, and things generally don’t end well for either the people or the animals.

By: itsgene

itsgene — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:45:00 +0000

Why are trailer parks always named “estates?”