East has the bugs and the west has the rats...

From the City:

One of the worst things about Toronto is the vermin and the bugs. When we lived in Peterborough I never once worried about my dog getting carried away by huge snarling city rats nor did I predict that one day I would be tearing my apartment apart hunting for bed bugs. But alas, this is the reality in Toronto. I was told very nonchalantly by a superintendent once that the east end has the bed bugs and the west end has the rats and mice. Gross.

What the city also has is a bunch of skunks and raccoons with no where to go. Yesterday when I was walking home from work I just happened to walk past a huge skunk passing his time rooting around in the neighbors front yard and don't even get me started on that damn raccoon who rips into my green compost once a week. Now you may be asking yourself; she was raised on a farm, she must have befriended a couple of skunks and raccoons in her day, but again this is not the case. In the country you never see these suckers first hand, you may see their aftermath (ripped garbage and a dog that reeks) but rarely do they come right out and greet you on your way home from work.

This morning I awoke to Simon standing over me (at 7 am I might add) informing me that Ruby (my sweet, harmless, angel of a dog) had, in the night, stalked and (sorta) killed a mouse and left it for us to find this lovely morning. Ruby has never killed anything and up until this point we thought that any good terrier trait had been bred out of her but alas we were wrong, she is in fact still a dog, a hunting dog at that.