If it's Adams Morgan, it must be rats.

Not sure if anyone's noticed, but it's raining pretty steady now. After months of more or less no rain to speak of, we're finally getting that steady soaking rain that will help the weeds in my backyard grow to immense proportions. Actually, yesterday evening I attacked those weeds and got rid of some of the more annoying ones, including some sort of mulberry tree or something that was sprouting several branches in the thin strip of dirt between the neighbor's retaining wall and the steps to our deck.

And yes, to combat those nasty rodents I also stapled some hardware cloth over a gap between a fencepost and a wall that the rats were using to move conveniently from yard to yard. Plus, over the weekend my aunt hooked me up with a different type of rodent trap, the sort that you set by using your foot and therefore avoid all the dangers of pinched fingers trying to set those monstrous old-fashioned rat traps. We'll see.

Speaking of rats, I see Michael Vick has pled guilty to whatever the official charges are when you maintain an illegal dogfighting operation that includes killing the more poorly performing dogs ("executing" them, as one of Vick's fellow fuck-ups had to say. Like it's the dog's fault you've got such moral poverty in your own life that you get your jollies being brutal to animals). It's pretty sad all around. Even Michael Wilbon, who has something of a cottage industry using his column to defend criminal athletes, couldn't seem to get around to labeling Vick a scapegoat for some conspiracy or other, instead bringing the hammer down by calling Vick "so arrogant, so vicious and seemingly without conscience" and further adding that "if Vick really did what his co-conspirators said and drowned dogs after trying unsuccessfully to hang them, he's pretty much scum-of-the-earth material."

Pretty strong words.

(I suppose some animal rights advocates out there among my vast readership will note the seeming hypocrisy between my contempt for Vick's destruction of dogs and my desire to destroy rats. However, if you're that much of an absolutist, I'm afraid I can't do anything for you...)