Two salient facts:

• We no longer have any cats. The kids all moved out, and to our shock and surprise, they took their pets with them. I guess we raised them responsibly after all.

• Temperatures here in the soon-to-be great white north have dropped into the freezing range lately, and are likely to stay there. And lower.

Any of you who have lived in this part of the country knows what happens next: the wildlife all tries to move indoors, and without large roving carnivores about, the rodents have been having a carnival. They’ve been banging the pots all night and frolicking on the countertops, and that means I have to act.

It is Halloween, and there shall be a reaping. I’ve got a pile of traps to set up, the swift savage ones that smash skulls and necks (most emphatically not the cruel slow glue traps), and I’m anticipating a ghoulish evening of hearing snap-snap-snap all night long, and cleaning up bodies in between handing out candy at the door. Let’s all hope I don’t get my jobs of dispensing things into buckets mixed up.