Transcript of S3/E2 - Pt. 1 Transcript

Charlie:
Hello and welcome to the British English podcast. The show all about British culture and British English. So today I thought I'd get Harry back on the mic and we would talk about a particular experience that he has had recently. And generally, this is covering the topic of pests. Yes, we're going to stick to a whole episode about pests. The things that you don't want in your life. Is that what a pest is, Harry, and hello. How are you doing?

Harry:
Helloo Nice to be here. Hello, people. Yeah, anyone could be a pest. You didn't invite me on because you consider me to be a pest, did you?

Charlie:
No, no, I don't consider you to be a pest. So, people can be pests.

Harry:
Yeah, yeah. It's basically anyone that's annoying. You could say, Oh, stop being a pest. That's the kind of day to day usage of it, isn't it?

Charlie:
And that, I suppose, also could be a little bit like about being a bit inappropriate sexually, right? You're being a pest to a woman, like that?

Harry:
Yeah. Oh, he's an absolute- Oh yeah. Started dating this guy, Harry. Very handsome, very knowledgeable about English, but he's an absolute sex pest!

Charlie:
Oh dear! I mean, that's accurate. It's very accurate example as well.

Harry:
Yeah, very accurate. 100 percent true. No, it's not.

Charlie:
Just- just-.

Harry:
I'm a virgin.

Charlie:
One of the three is correct.

Harry:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then I thought the- the verb 'pester' as well- to pester it's like to- 'to annoy', that must have the same- same route, right? Stop pestering me. Stop annoying me.

Charlie:
Yeah, totally. Yeah, stop pestering me. But it's- well, we are focussing on the animal. But we're here to talk about the, well, undesirable animal that you perhaps get in your house, a pest.

Harry:
That's what my ex used to call me, an undesirable animal. So, you know,

Charlie:
I wonder why.

Harry:
What are we talking about...

Charlie:
You're an ex? Yeah. Ok, so a pest. What is it? What is it?

Harry:
A pest is some kind of insect or animal, which is either annoying to humans like a mouse or a rat, or is something an insect or an animal that is destructive to like plants, livestock. You know, things on a- on a farm.

Charlie:
Very nice.

Harry:
Agriculture.

Charlie:
Very nice. I was just listening to something about dingoes in Australia, wild dogs as being- being pests for the farmers because they kill the sheep.

Harry:
Now, this fucking dingoes! Oh, those fucking dingoes have been at my sheep again! Oh, God. It's not the Aussie English podcast, it's- it's the British English podcast,

Charlie:
So we're not going to talk about not going to talk about dingoes. We're going to talk about pests that you get in the UK. Because as I've been around the world, as Harry has been, he'll probably have noticed you get different pests in different necks of the wood. Different areas. In the UK, the most common pest- what would you say that is?

Harry:
So in houses, it's quite common. What- so, sometimes- get a pigeon. Did I tell you I had a pigeon come into my bloody- my flat?

Charlie:
No, maybe. Tell me more, though. Tell me it again.

Harry:
A good year for pests or a bad year for pests in my house. So for a couple of days, I was getting down the chimney- down the chimney breast. I was hearing the kind of flapping of- of wings and I thought, Oh my God, there must be a pigeon trapped in the chimney.

Charlie:
Did you not think it was Santa immediately?

Harry:
Well, it was Christmas time, so I did assume Santa, but it went on for a couple of days and the presents were already under the tree, so I thought, OK, must be a pigeon. But I checked the chimney breast. It's nice to say the word breast freely, and I looked up and there was- there was no pigeon, so I thought, OK, there must be nesting up there because sometimes they do that. And I- I've talked to other people that have had this happen to them and they said, Yeah, they're probably just nesting up in the chimney.

Charlie:
Wow.

Harry:
So. But then so I'm alone now. Marina has- has left me.

Charlie:
Not- not- tempo- temporarily. Good.

Harry:
Is- she's living somewhere else at the moment for work. So I was on my sofa. I was just about to go to bed. It was about half 11 and I turned off the TV and I hear this, I hear a (sound effect).

Charlie:
Ooh!

Harry:
Like- and then I hear a kind of rustling like, (sound effect) and I look over and there's a big fat pigeon in the- in the fireplace. And I'm like, Oh, my God. That's exactly- I'm just about to go to bed, and now I've got to try and get a pigeon out of my house.

Charlie:
Wow.

Harry:
There's no way I could- I could go to bed with a bloody, you know, big fat pigeon waddling around my living room.

Charlie:
Yeah, yeah.

Harry:
That's ah, waddle. Waddling.

Charlie:
So what did you do?

Harry:
So I got onto Google. I think I got onto WikiHow, actually. WikiHow is amazing. You need to use it. I think it would be a good way to plan podcast episodes, actually. So I went to WikiHow and it gave me a step by step guide, it said. Clear the area because you don't want the pigeon like bumping into things, shitting over everything and hurting itself. Clear the area, open-.

Charlie:
So you sold- so you sold everything in your living room,

Harry:
Sold everything. Yeah, got one hundred and fifty quid for my sofa. Got that straight onto eBay. Opened the window up, so it says open the biggest window in the room. So I did so. I closed the door. I got a large blanket. So I was like a torero in- in Spain. You know, they held the big kind of red blanket things to attract the bull.

Charlie:
A matador!

Harry:
A matador. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.

Charlie:
What, did you say? Did you like, in Spanish? But I thought, that is the Spanish.

Harry:
I said- I said torero. So, matador. Yeah, that's like it means 'killer'. I guess. Like, killer of bulls, Torero is like a bull- bullfighter. Tore- 'toro'. 'Toro' is bull. And 'torero', I think, is the matador, the- the guy in the funny outfit who, you know,

Charlie:
Not so funny to him, but yeah.

Harry:
He- no, he takes it very seriously. He looks, yeah, very elegant. Very elegant to him. I think they look ridiculous. But anyway, so so what I did was I held this blanket up to kind of 'usher' it- another nice word. So usher it towards the window. Because I was expecting it to fly. You know, that's what you see pigeons doing, flying and eating. So I thought, OK, it's going to fly at some point. It never flew and it was so fat. This pigeon was the fattest pigeon I've ever seen in my life. It started waddling over to the window and then it just was like, Come on, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, go out there with your friends. And it didn't want to go. So I had to wrap a blanket around it and stuck it, and I chucked out the window.

Charlie:
Oh wow!

Harry:
In the morning, I went out to check but he had gone. He was dead in the same place that I had thrown him. Yeah.

Charlie:
Wow. Really?

Harry:
Sorry. So sad. Yeah, and then I- and then I put him in- I double bagged him and put them in the bin.

Charlie:
Oh my goodness me, I need- I need to put a, like a content warning over this podcast. So. But I've actually got a story that's even more gory about pigeons. Sorry, guys, if you're listening pigeons, we are very sorry. But did he just die? Or it just die from the cold or a fox got him or what? Oh, I've introduced in another British pest there, haven't I?

Harry:
A fox? That is a pest, yeah.

Charlie:
Carry on though.

Harry:
How are they pests? Why are they pests, though? Just a quick to ask. Is it because they eat our plants,

Charlie:
They kill our chickens and they eat our rubbish and they- and they kind of ruin the bags and they spill the rubbish all over the city streets.

Harry:
Oh, yeah, OK, so they're litterers.

Charlie:
They're litterers. And they're chicken murderers.

Harry:
Chicken murderers. Ah, we're chicken murderers as well, though, aren't we?

Charlie:
We're more than that. We eat their babies that haven't even hatched.

Harry:
We're the worst kind of chicken murderers.

Charlie:
And we might even combine the meat and the egg? I mean, that's a bit much.

Harry:
Oh. Oh. What, in a soup?

Charlie:
No. Well, maybe, but I'm just leaning on a plate. You might have an egg and a bit of chicken meat. That's a bit...

Harry:
Oh yeah,

Charlie:
Cruel.

Harry:
Most people do that. I do that.

Charlie:
Yeah. It's going over the top isn't it.

Harry:
Yeah, I had a chicken and mushroom pot noodle with an egg in it the other day. I actually did!

Charlie:
You're mocking the bird.

Harry:
Oh, no, no, it's chicken chow mein. It's chicken chow mein. I lied.

Charlie:
Anyway, so foxes are pests. We might talk about them in a bit, but yes, so the pigeon.

Harry:
All right.

Charlie:
How did it die?

Harry:
So. Oh, there's my dad outside. Hi, dad. My dad actually said to me, Well, if a pigeon is unable to fly, which clearly was, he fell down my bloody chimney. It's not a good sign. It's probably not going to last long. At best a couple of days.

Charlie:
Right.

Harry:
So yeah, obviously it was on its last legs. It was on its last legs. And so, yeah, it just died. I think it just wasn't able to. Yeah. If it's unable to fly, I mean, it's not- it's not really able to live properly, is it, so.

Charlie:
But you did-.

Harry:
They have to be up there, they have to be up there.

Charlie:
So-.

Harry:
That's where they want to be.

Charlie:
Do you think you should have put him out of his own misery?

Harry:
Once. Like, stamped on him or hit him with a shovel.

Charlie:
Well, this actually leads to my story, which is pretty horrific. So.

Harry:
Oh my god.

Charlie:
Do you remember this one?

Harry:
Oh, shit, yes, I do. Tell me, though,

Charlie:
So at uni, we moved into quite a nice place and it had a nice balcony in third year, me and a friend and

Harry:
Well, I haven't heard this. I haven't...

Charlie:
Oh ok. And yeah, there was a pigeon on the balcony and we went there in the first day. Ok, yeah, there's pigeons, all right. They'll flutter away eventually. But a couple of days later, there was one that was still there and I was trying to shoo him away, but he wasn't moving. Very similar to your story. Overweight, couldn't move. I think it had a bad leg as well. And- and we didn't really know what to do. We thought about getting a pest control or something, but I'm not very hands on, so I kind of didn't bother with it. And then our friend Matt, he came round, he heard about it and he grew up not on a farm, but he grew up around animals and he's rung a chicken's neck, no problem. And-.

Harry:
He's a chicken murderer as well.

Charlie:
And yeah, he said, Well, have you got a kitchen knife? I was like, What? So guys, maybe skip ahead 30 seconds here. He went into the balcony. (sound effect) Beheaded the thing. I had to chuck it over the balcony.

Harry:
Oh my God.

Charlie:
The body and the head- and then the head. I had to do it through a plastic bag. This is awful content. Sorry, guys.

Harry:
Wait, is this the place..? Was this in second year, when you lived above Tesco's..?

Charlie:
That was third year, but yes, that place. Yeah.

Harry:
Oh, that was third year. So you chucked it over. I'm most disturbed by that. So you chucked it over the balcony, onto the floor, outside the local minimart?

Charlie:
No, it was a separate wall. But it was gross because there was a roof under our balcony and it just stayed there for about three months, rotting away.

Harry:
Oh, that's disgusting.

Charlie:
This is disgusting. Sorry, guys. Ok, but I mean, I chose the episode pests. I mean, you've clicked on this one.

Harry:
Yeah, I mean, yeah. It's not for the faint hearted. I think this is a- it's a good- there's going to be so much vocabulary around it that comes up and you've got to think about that. The pest- after you've killed the pest, which is normally what happens when you have pests. Normally they end up meeting their fate. And so you kill them and then you've got to think, what do you do with them after? Because if you're making that decision to kill them, it's up to you. It's up to us to dispose of them in as humane a way as possible, I guess?

Charlie:
It's true. It's true. You made me think of a good phrase here: to meet your maker.

Harry:
Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Charlie:
If someone has gone to meet their maker, they have died. To meet your maker, I guess, 'the maker'. I guess that comes from a religious belief that 'the maker' is God and you're- you're meeting God again, maybe.

Harry:
Yeah. Meet your maker. Yeah, that's a nice- that's a nice one, isn't it? The Creator.

Charlie:
Yeah, OK. But so you've had some pigeon problems in the past, as have I, and that is a very common thing. Pigeon problems. What was the next bit?

Harry:
Pigeon problems in the past, I thought you said you wanted to avoid plosives?

Charlie:
Yeah. Pigeon problems in the past can be a problem for British people or people that come to- people that come to the UK. So expect pigeons to be in your life. But there was another one that came into your life recently, and that was the rat, wasn't it? The rato.

Harry:
Yeah, yeah. Actually, yeah.

Charlie:
I've done a full-

Harry:
Rato, ratones. Because they are mice. So yeah, you got it right in Spanish, wrong in English. So yeah, I had- I had an infestation of mice in my flat.

Charlie:
An infestation of mice. Oh, I thought it was just one fucker. It was. It was a whole gang.

Harry:
Yeah, yeah. I reckon up to about half a dozen. So about six.

Charlie:
Okay.

Harry:
A dozen. Is 12.

Charlie:
And I just- I just checked. A group of mice is a horde.

Harry:
A horde of mice? Ok, nice. So what will that be? Any more than two would be a horde?

Charlie:
I'd go with that. Yeah, three or four. Yeah, a horde of mice.

Harry:
Does that make- does that make my house a 'whored' house?

Charlie:
(laughing)

Harry:
Oh, terrible joke.

Charlie:
So why did you want to change the fact that it was a 'whored' house?

Harry:
Because it is- as much as I love 'whored' houses or whore houses, I- I just- I was fed up with... So I'll tell you what happens, all right? A couple of nights in a row- it's kind of similar to the build up with the pigeons, I heard something under the floorboards when I was in bed. So, I go to bed at about twelve, as you know from the pigeon story, I tend to wake up about 5am for my first morning wee. My peepee, my piss, my morning urination. So I went for my wee. I came back to bed, I was trying to get back to sleep and I hear some scuffling under the- under the floorboards (sound effect) and then a little-

Charlie:
Great sound effects!

Harry:
A little bit of (sound effect). Well, maybe like, (sound effect) maybe that's better. Can you hear that?

Charlie:
I can.

Harry:
Just like that. That night. Oh, that's not nice. But then before I knew it, I was asleep again. I'd forgotten about it. The next night, I heard the same scuttling again, and this time I heard some nibbling. I heard some nibbling.

Charlie:
How did you hear nibbling?

Harry:
(sound effect) But it was. It was the sound of- it was the sound of something gnawing at my chest of drawers. So in the corner of my room, I don't have a cupboard, a wardrobe. I have a chest of drawers. So a big set of drawers where I keep my clothes. And at the back of that, there was gnawing coming from that. It was (sound effect), like wood being eaten.

Charlie:
Wow, 'gnawing'. A mice, a mouse was gnawing at your chest.

Harry:
Gnawing, this is very advanced vocabulary. I love that word. 'Gnawing' at my chest of drawers. Yeah.

Charlie:
Yeah. Wow, OK. And how did you respond to this gnawing?

Harry:
Well, I was petrified. I was petrified. I didn't want to- I didn't want to see it. It's like when you're watching a horror film and you cover your eyes, you know, it's hard. You don't want to see the- the gore, you don't want to see the thing that scares you. So I was like that and it was worse than watching a horror because it was real and it was in my bedroom and I'm in bed naked and I'm like- I mean, the naked bit doesn't really matter. If I was fully clothed in bed, I wouldn't have been any less scared, to be honest. But I was feeling vulnerable and I was on my own, I was in bed and his gnawing from the corner of my bedroom and the possibility of rat, so I just stayed in bed.

Harry:
The next night, the same thing was- was happening and I hadn't done anything before that because I thought, Well, maybe they'll go away. I didn't really know how it all worked. So the same, the same thing happened again. But this time I went- I went to the toilet and the scuttling was getting more and more, you know, loud and disturbing. So, you know, it seemed like there were more of them. And I was in the toilet and I- I looked out into the hallway and I saw a little- I saw- I saw next to my fridge. There's a little duster, and it- it's standing up.

Harry:
And I saw it go, (sound effect) I saw it fall. I saw the duster fall and I was like, Oh my god, oh my God, this is it. I'm going to see it. And lo and behold, this- this little mouse, little black mouse or dark brown scuttled out from around the back of the fridge and ran into the kitchen.

Charlie:
Oh.

Harry:
And that's what they're after. That's what they're after. They're there to eat, aren't they? They're there to- to get food, to feed, to feast on whatever you have in your- in your kitchen.

Charlie:
Hopefully, some dead pigeon.

Harry:
Hopefully a dead pigeon, yeah. So I left a dead pigeon there for them, and they were very happy.

Charlie:
And they're still feasting on it. That- that hoarder?

Harry:
Yeah. Soon they'll get to the head and I can join in.

Charlie:
So I would say that the first tell of having mice in- in your premises would be that the droplets or the poos. The droppings, sorry, not droplets, droppings.

Harry:
I didn't see any!

Charlie:
The mice poo- did not see under your bed or anything?

Harry:
I had to look, no, I didn't see any.

Charlie:
Because I've had that in the past, and we've put these mouse traps out and not the- not the nasty ones, the ones that trap them in there. And then you've got to take them out to the wilderness and then let them out, which is a bit disgusting because they urinate and it smells, and yeah.

Harry:
How did that go? Yes. Did you- did you manage to trap them with the humane mouse traps?

Charlie:
Yes. Yes. Yeah, it was tedious, but I felt- when I was younger, I was a bit sensitive to the idea of chopping their spine in half. Oh, with a, you know, a traditional mousetrap.

Harry:
Yeah, it's horrible.

Charlie:
So I didn't really want to go down that route. But I don't know if I would be so kind now. Maybe I would be. I don't know. Depends on what they're gnawing at.

Harry:
Yeah. I mean, I also went for a humane mousetrap and I was- so I had a panic. One day, after that third night of, you know, really restless sleep, I hadn't managed to get a good night's sleep for three nights now. So I was getting really tired, frustrated with it. So I was like, I need to sort this problem out. So I- I had a big, thorough clean of my flat for like, probably about four hours. Cleaned like-

Charlie:
That's the best time to do it. When you hear gnawing from mice in your bedroom, it's time to have a little spring clean.

Harry:
Yeah.

Charlie:
That's the only time to clean, really, isn't it?

Harry:
Exactly. So I can have a couple of years off of cleaning now. But no, so what? So I started with the bathroom, cleaned that very thoroughly, then went into the kitchen, which I discovered was there- their lair. This is like, you know, this is where they were- they were loving it. So there's this corner cupboard and it's got like a rotating shelf. It's got two rotating shelves and they're quite, they're quite wide and they're not that clean.

Harry:
So I keep all of my sources in there. I keep alcohol in there and I keep- I keep spreads in there, like a peanut butter. And, well, I had this huge tub of peanut butter. It was about- it must have been like a kilogram of peanut butter. It was ridiculous. It's not the kind of tub you'd have- you'd find in, like a- tin at school, like a dinner lady's cupboard, like it was a massive tub. I went in this cupboard and that tub, they had gnawed through the lid. They gnawed through the lid. They'd eaten through it. And so they- they'd obviously been in there having an absolute field day, you know, just like,

Charlie:
Oh, because they do love peanut butter.

Harry:
They love it. I didn't realise. I didn't realise they loved it so much. They've eaten, they'd eaten like a third of the tub, so I was like, this is where they're- they're hanging out. This is where they're- they're absolutely loving life. Yeah, I cleaned all of that. And I made sure that everything had lids on it. And I got myself some humane mouse traps which, like the ones you had, they lure in the- the mice and then they trap them so as not to do them harm. It's kind of like a trap, trap door mechanism where they can't get out.

Charlie:
And traditionally, we put a bit of cheese at the end of the trap. Did you decide to put peanut butter in there considering they were clearly loving it?

Harry:
Exactly. Yeah, they did. But I made the mistake of binning the other peanut butter, the one that they had been eating, the one they already loved. And they'd obviously, you know, got a taste for it and they liked it. So I got another peanut butter. I smeared the biggest spoonful of that in one of them and left a kind of, on the little ramp that goes into it. I smeared a little bit on there as well. And in the other one, I put red Leicester cheese and cheddar just in case they didn't like red Leicester.

Harry:
Again, 2 big- 2 big lumps. And I thought I was being clever here. It's a very obvious thing to do. I left a trail of cheese chunks, little chunks of cheese leading up to the cheesy mousetrap and then a trail of nuts leading up to the nutty peanut butter mousetrap. Ok. Within the hour. I'm not joking, I had it, so I had a shower. I maybe sat and watched a couple of videos on YouTube. Within the hour-

Charlie:
And you came back and Marina was down there lifting it up.

Harry:
Go back to your cage. And so within the hour, these bloody rats or whatever they were, I didn't know what they were at the time. They had eaten all of the little, the little bits that I had left out, all the trails.

Charlie:
And did they get in?

Harry:
Gone in, they'd already figured out my big plan. They were-.

Charlie:
Or maybe you gave too much food out at the free section, so they were full by the time that they...

Harry:
Right. Like when you go to, yeah, like a food fair, they're giving too many tasters. I'm full, I'm full on the chicken drumsticks, thanks, but...

Charlie:
Do you want- do you want to go in that dark little space and get the last bit? No, I'm full let's go home. Did you manage to, you know, get rid of the horde of mice?

Harry:
So my humane mousetraps didn't work. They figured them out pretty quickly. So I thought it's about time I got on to the professionals. So I called the pest control people. And they came round and they- within about half an hour, they identified a hole where they were coming in round the back of the house, in an electricity cupboard, electric cupboard.

Harry:
And so they were getting in there and they put down loads of poison, like little trays of poison in various different places around the flat. And they said, Right, so yeah, I'll come and pick these up in two weeks. In the meantime, you know, you will hear them for the next 7 to 10 days, but they're going to basically, they're going to slowly die because they'll keep on killing themselves by eating this bait.

Charlie:
Oh!

Harry:
It's basically a mixture of different foods and a poison in there. And then they'll just die and decompose. They'll just decompose under your floorboards, most likely. I was like, what?! They're going to reek! Are you going to come and pick like, you know, pick them up, and...

Charlie:
Oh, good word there.

Harry:
They're going to reek, yeah! They're going to stink!

Charlie:
Smell really bad!

Harry:
And they said, No, no, he doesn't smell that bad. And you know, they're just going to decompose and they'll probably die under the floorboards. So I won't even have to see any. But now I do, I go around the flat thinking, Oh my god, one day I'm just going to see like a horde of dead mice which is a horrible thought.

Charlie:
Oh, do you reckon they would have maybe- because they did it, they- they died one by one, or they certainly didn't all die at once. Maybe they put them in little funeral boxes and said their farewells and had a little structure?

Harry:
That'd be nice. That would have been nice. Maybe you think they're arranging their own funerals under the floorboards? Yeah, I'm sorry.

Charlie:
Well, arranging each other's.

Harry:
Maybe, yeah, it's just- it's horrible. It's a horrible thought, and I hate the idea of killing them all, but it really is the only way to to get them out. It seems to be. My mom said to me...

Charlie:
I mean, you tried the humane way.

Harry:
I tried. I told my mom this. I told my mum like, Oh God, I don't wanna get the professionals around. I want to do it. Deal with it myself. I want to do it in a as humane a way as possible. And she said, Oh, you just- you just- my mum is a vegetarian as well. She said, No, you just- you've got to kill them all. You got to kill the whole family. You got to kill every single one of them, has got to go. I was like, Mum, what are you saying? Now I kind of...

Charlie:
If you should listen to anyone about encouraging you to kill something, it would be your mum. She's the most harmless person. She- she wouldn't hurt a flower. No, it's not that phrase, what is it?

Harry:
No she beheads flowers.

Charlie:
She probably wouldn't though.

Harry:
I've seen her. She wouldn't hurt a fly. No, she wouldn't, no, but a horde of mice. She's got no quarrels, no qualms with that.

Charlie:
Ok, well, there we go. Let's end on that note, but that is just Part One. Part Two and Three, we've got a lot more talk about pests. But we're going to go about cultural upbringings of pests or like different areas of the world, different pests you get. And talk more about what you can expect to get if you come to the UK. We've obviously talked about mice and we've touched on foxes, but we've got a few more under there, haven't we? We've got under the floorboards. We've got well, we'll save it for part two and three. So obviously you guys want to come and join us in Part Two and Three. So yeah, but if you are only here for Part One, thank you very much for coming to listen in on this conversation between myself and Harry. Thank you very much, Harry.

Harry:
Thank you. It's been lovely.

Charlie:
All right. Well, we'll see you guys in Part Two, hopefully. If not, we'll see you next week.

Harry:
Bye.

Charlie:
Bye bye. That's all for me this week, I hope you have a good seven days ahead of you. My name is Charlie Baxter and I will see you next time on the British English podcast.