That’s my new nickname for my nemesis this summer, also-known-as the squirrel. A good villain needs a good name. I’ve been unsuccessful so far with capturing this criminal mastermind, who is guilty of trespassing, vandalism and disturbing the peace, but I have dealt several devastating blows to his crime syndicate by knocking off his minions. I’m speaking of mice here. I’ve rat trapped three and all in the loft, which makes me wonder how many are scurrying around on the main floor? Fortunately, none as of yet have attempted to play pinochle on my snout.

Actually, Captain Midnight comes from a long running adventure series that began on radio in the thirties, graduated to serial movie shorts in the forties and ended up as a TV series in the fifties. I watched a few of the movie shorts and they are cheesy enough to bait a rat trap with. Cheese? I’ll try that next.

I did put two more mousetraps out, but I’m not sure that I baited them correctly. These are conventional spring-loaded traps. I don’t think that the new traps that look like roach motels are working at all.

And no the water on the clock is not from the roof leak, it’s PhotoShop. After all the rain it was very humid and the weather service had issued us a heat warning. Coming from Saint Louis though we just laughed. You call this hot?

In related roof news, just before bedtime, we heard a huge noise. No it wasn’t Captain Midnight related, but a huge birch branch had fallen on the porch roof and then landed on the ground. There was no wind, so maybe it was hung up from before? This morning we cut it up and added it to the new birch woodpile. There are several more such branches that have been broken off, but still remain high in the tree. These other branches aren’t larger than the one that fell.