GUIDE IS OUR ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL OPERATOR.
HERE’S HER SERVICE SCENES:
AN INTRO TO ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL
Our teammate Guide believes that The Wilderness knows best. All earth creatures–wild, tame, or otherwise–know The Magic Line around our territories we call “home.”
Everyone knows that human bodies host diseases and disorders, but treating systemic disorders harbored in our environments outside our bodies isn’t an accepted practice yet. Guide’s working hard to change that, becuase treating the environmental conditions that create infestations (and diseases) just makes a lot more sense…
Guide has discovered that our territories have just as many (if not more) disorders than the ones listed in the real doctors’ diagnostic manuals. As we speak, Guide is blazing character trails for future rat catchers to follow with diagnosises and treatments for environmental disorders like Entry Hole Disorder (read more), Predator Free Food/Shelter Disorder, Systemic Death Production Disorder, and of course the naming, tracking, hunting, and ending of earth’s most common (and mercurial) disorder, The Infestation.
Guide isn’t asking the health authorities to accept her. She’s on a one-woman mission to elevate her age-old profession by showing (not telling) her new service story to one customer at a time.
(A) THE WILDERNESS SECURITY TEST (aka THE BEGINNING)
Wild creatures test homes for openings all the time. Testing the territories of their neighbors is something we wild creatures do.
Guide will track your encounter story anywhere The Action takes her: dive down into your crawlsapce, climb your roof tops, and scower your kitchen for open entry holes and signs of wilderness activity.
The Wilderness Security Test is the beginning, the first short scene, of Guide’s introductory rodent service. If she can’t track any activty or diagnose an environmental disorder, or you simply decide you don’t like a lanky legged Wilderness Guide poking around your territory, then you will not be charged for this service.
BOOK A WILDERNESS SECURITY TEST NOW
(B) THE SET UP SCENE (aka THE PART WHERE WE MAKE A PLAN)
If Guide discovers and diagnoises an enviornmental disorder (like Entry Hole Disorder, Predator Free Food/Shelter Disorder, or Systemic Death Production Disorder) during her Wilderness Security Test, the scene she will perform next is The Set Up Scene:
Guide is not the hero. She’s a kickass side kick, who homemaking hero/producer of this service story, we understand that you care how the living creatures in your home meet their ends. It’s your territory. You shouldn’t have to “just trust us” based on reviews or clever marketing. Guide will work with you to develop a custom plan for your home territory; only then will she perform the action of The Set Up Scene:
(C) DROPPING THE EXCLUSION BOMB (aka THE ACTION)
Trapping and killing critters doesn’t make your territory more secure, because it doesn’t address the environmental disorder(s) that welcomed them into your home in the first place.
To treat (and hopefully cure) environmental disorders like Entry Hole Disorder and Systemic Death Production Disorder, Guide “drops The Exclusion Bomb” on your home.
As she likes to say, “Often it takes a radical change in the environment to make a radical change in The Action of my wild creature friends.”
To that end, hammer in hand, Guide will spend one, two, or ten hours patching entry holes with concrete, foaming gaps around pipes, cutting metal flashing for eve and gutterline exclusions, digging to expose tunnels and burrows, rolling out hardware cloth, repairing vents, installing new screens, and doing everything she can to fortify your Homefront.
The rats hate change even more than humans. So many environmental changes to their happy nesting burrows, all at once, will produce either a fight or flight reaction from the rats. Either they will run to your neighbors’ nearest entry hole for shelter, or they will cling to The Good Olde Days (aka Situation Normal) and then they will die–right on cue!–like stoic sea captains going down with a way of life that no longer exists.
(D) THE TRAPPING SCENES (aka THE ORDEALS)
Guide knows she’s not a rat. She has no desire to join them. She also knows rats are smart, but not smart like humans (even the best of Disneys rats), so she really doesn’t want to initiate them like dogs into the strange civilizations of pets either.
Guide has what she calls a “working relationship” with rats. Predator/prey is an ancient, timeworn relationship that offers a weath of benefits to both players. Simply the prey supplies the predator with food and entertainment (the thrill of the hunt!), and the predator supplies his prey with control; the sense of security that comes from surrendering ones life to the Higher Power who will defend you from other lesser predators and provide a known/ritual stability to their journey down the warm golden burrows to Volehalla.
Humans know this classic as the conflict between freedom vs. security.
(E) TESTING THE ENDING (aka LIFE RETURNS TO NORMAL)
The best ending is the one that lasts the longest. It is Guide’s great hope that her exclusion scenes will redraw a line that her wilderness creature friends won’t cross ever again, but she can’t know how long her treatment of your environment will last until it lasts. That’s why, after Guide drops The Exclusion Bomb, she will leave a bag of birdseed (or some other feast for rodents) to Test The Ending.
If you’d rather not worry about monitoring your new Homefront (or you just want an excuse to hang with Guide again) feel free to book her for an end testing service:
(F) THE VOLEHALLA RODENT SYSTEM
Guide developed this system for organic small market farmers and gardeners (who don’t choose to use rodenticides), but she’s found that it works great for homeowners too, especially those encountering rats in their backyards: old sheds, chicken pens, woodpiles, etc.
Not only does Guide make each Volehalla box by hand, she also has some other cool old rat catcher tricks up here sleeve…like this pest control device (made from the finest scraps in my garage) that keeps chicken feed safe from the rats at night AND doubles as a giant rat trap:
(G) SAVE THE SQUIRRELS! VENTING AND EXCLUSION SERVICE
In this service scene, Guide will build you a custom squirrel vent for your territorial entry hole(s) and evict the squirrels in your attic (or crawlspace) without killing them.
Nothing hippie about this one. It’s an expensive waste of time and money to hire a company to trap and kill every squirrel in your yard (and your neighbors yard) before they do the exclusion work.
Join the movement to save the squirrel! Next time you hear scratching, don’t call the nice guys with gas chambers in the back of their trucks. Call your local Wilderness Security Guide.
Introduction: The only kind of control Guide believes will last in any meaningful way is providing “trail magic” support that will make her wild creature friends stronger, more secure, and able to feed, find shelter, and control themselves better. Unfortunately, most of the humans living and working behind The Fourth Wall aren’t ready for that kind of pest control service yet, so Guide spends most of her days helping humans reenforce/redraw their territorial lines by evicting and excluding wild creatures from their homes, and trapping “the lost ones” who have become too hooked on the creature comforts of human civilization to save…
Supereconomic Powers: sharpened bird’s eye perspective powered by her trauma induced hyper anxiety, which is constantly cueing her to flee (fly high away) from the present.
Character Flaws: Guide can get so lost in The Action she often forgets to eat and sleep and that sometimes leads to hallucinations.
Competition: Fake/green washed pest control companies who claim to be pet and baby safe and ecologically minded like Axiom, Edge, and Western/Alpha Ecological.
Guide is especially proud to have been a sidekick in the following stories:
Service Story #42: The Adventures of Ratty Claus, Episode 1: The Pilot
Service Story #35: “7 and 7 in 3,” The Craigslist Miracle
Service Story #40: The Exclusion Bomb
Service Stories #39, #43: Save the Squirrels!
Service Story #37: Treating the Orkin Man
Wilderness Security Guide was born on The Pacific Crest Trail. She was the trail name of a thru hiker named Odessa who, after five months in The Wilderness, tried to return to civilization.
She rented an apartment with a friend, found a job, and tried to return to her old work-a-day life in Portland, Oregon. She tried, but that will that had inspired her to journey—15, 20, 30 plus—miles a day was gone.
After years of finding nothing in civilization worth living for, she hit rock bottom—totally strung out on the screens, fast cars, and inaction of modern life. She didn’t have a plan. One night, alone and sleepless, the moon spoke to her through her bedroom window.
“Move,” was all it said, and she felt The Action moved within her. Before she knew what she was doing, she was standing in the open door of her home, backpack on, trekking poles in hand.
The world seemed different somehow. The streetlights, the sound of the freeway, the hard concrete, and the glow from her neighbor’s TV screen—it suddenly all seemed so wild.
Guide left a note for her friend. Then she synched her pack, planted her trekking poles, and she began to move…
She hiked through her neighbor’s lawn, over their fence, through the neat rows of a garden, along a back alley, until she saw a back door that had been left open. Something inside her said, “Break The Wall.”
And she hiked through the open door, into the kitchen, and up the stairs where she bushwhacked through a hallway full of toys into a bedroom with two sleeping kids. The moon shone through the window. It was blocked by a dresser, so she climbed it, threw the window open, crawled out, through the window, out onto the roof. Overhead a Great Horned Owl was circling the neighborhood, looking for a tasty meal.
When the owl spotted her, it circled and swooped twice—and then it flew straight for the city’s largest wild preserve, Forest Park. Guide didn’t know if the owl knew that it was leading her, but it led her just the same.
As Guide swing down off the roof, she heard a voice. Looking up, she saw a girl standing on the roof outside the window.
“Who are you?” the girl asked fearlessly.
The wild creature smiled and said, “I’m Wilderness Security Guide.”
Then Guide followed the owl into the early morning light. She didn’t have a plan, but she could feel it. Guide’s quest to explore, map, and break The Fourth Wall of civilization had begun…
The note her friend found that morning read: DON’T WORRY. I WILL BE FINE. I’M TAKING THE RETURN TRAIL HOME.
Stacie