Exterminators are stymied! “What were we going to do? Shoot them?”
When Phil and Amelia Larson bought their cottage home in Santa Monica, the newlyweds thought that they had found the perfect place to start a family. A 1926 craftsman home, it boasted two bedrooms – one bedroom left bare for a baby they both wanted.
“It was an ideal home for us,” says Phil. “The previous owner had put up a white picket fence and had planted roses in both the front yard and the back. It was just wonderful. The day we moved in, we noticed two garden gnomes in the front yard. While that wasn’t exactly my way of decorating, I just thought ‘okay, they’ve been here awhile, I’ll just let them stay.’”
They began to unpack their things the following day. It was then that Phil noticed a difference in the front yard. “There were four garden gnomes, now. All male. Two had their pants pulled down. There were steaming piles of feces beneath their butts. That’s when I began suspecting things were not right.”
CALLING FOR BACKUP!
Not knowing what to do, he called X-Terminators, a local business known for its high ratings when it came to exterminating pests.
“I have to tell you,” says X-Terminators president, Jordan Dufew, “when I first got the call, I thought Phil was crazy. Maybe he was a druggie? Maybe he was, uh, intellectually challenged? I thought it would turn out to be raccoons.”
And, so, an X-Terminators team was sent out, with Dufew in the lead. “We came out with raccoon traps. That’s the way we usually like to trap them. And, then, we let them loose in the nearest forest, about a twenty-minute drive. We keep ‘em alive and help ‘em thrive.
“When my team pulled up, we couldn’t spot any gnomes. Phil and Amelia let us in and showed us the empty bedroom. It was filled with fecal matter as well as a small accordion. Again, I thought it was raccoons. Maybe raccoons that enjoyed dancing.
“The stench of feces, urine and Smirnoff vodka filled the house.”
“We set up raccoon traps and, also, constructed a video system that would film anything that moved, it was motion control-activated. We were ready.”
“As it turns out,” Phil reveals. “That night was all out hell. There were footsteps all over the house. The stench of feces, urine and Smirnoff vodka filled the house. When Mr. Dufew showed up with his team, the next day, he showed us the overnight tapes. My wife is still unconscious in the bedroom as a result.”
X-Terminators president Jordan Dufew picks up the thread. “It was horrible,” he winces. “Horrible. We were expecting raccoons and, instead, we saw a dozen garden gnomes, knocking back shots and…well …banging each other’s bones the whole night. It was a peewee sized orgy! And it made me want to puke. It was liked watching Grandma and Grandpaw do the humpty-bump, shit-faced. I still get flashback.”
Dufew admits he didn’t know what to do. “What were we going to do? Shoot them? We had to come up with something that would work.”
Dufew’s team stood guard the following night. “One of the worst nights of my life,” Dufew recalls. “There were gnomes on the roof, pissing down on us, crapping on us. I saw some gnomes with guns! The rest of them were just fornicating away on the front lawn while the Larsons, inside, were screaming their heads off. I can tell you, it was hard to have dinner after that. I went for pasta.”
So, Dufew did some research. He found out that gnomes lived underground and came out at night. “We improvised a kind of approach that we do with gophers. Normally, with gophers, we locate the main tunnel, and inject poison. But, with gnomes? You really want to kill these little folks?”
X-Terminators take on the gnomes.
The team turned out the following night with a lot of netting and special anti-gnome gas. “Once we found the main tunnel, it was easy. We got there before they emerged and pumped gas into their tunnels and underground homes…laughing gas.”
Within twenty minutes, Dufew watched three-dozen gnomes of both sexes, staggering across the front lawn.
“They were laughing their asses off,” Dufew recalls. “We scooped them all off into big nets and brought them to the local forest. There, they can do whatever gnomes do, without running into modern life. I’ve heard they’ve settled in. There have been reports of little old men exposing themselves to joggers.”
In terms of Phil and Amelia Larson? “We’re just so grateful to X-Terminators.” says Phil. “We haven’t had a sighting in two weeks! And Amelia is gnawing a lot less tree bark than she was back then. We’ll take her off the meds in a week or two.”
For Jordan Dufew, it was another job well done. “We’ve signed a contract to show up once a month to make sure the Larsons have no more gnome problems.”
He frowns. “But there’s just something about their house… I don’t know.”
He glances over his shoulder. “See that plaster flamingo over in the corner, next to the picket fence? It wasn’t there last night.”
