Hello and welcome to the English Like A Native podcast.
My name is Anna and you're listening to week 37, day 5 of Your English Five A Day, the second season.
Today is Friday, and that means we are bringing all the vocabulary from week 37 together in one big story.
So all you have to do is sit back, Relax and listen.
I do hope you enjoy today's tale.
It's called The Weasel in the Attic.
Here we go.
My mother-in-law is quite a character.
She's incredibly practical and brilliant at solving problems that would stump most people.
She used to work as a tailor, so whenever we need clothes mended or accessories repaired, we take them straight to her.
I've become so lazy that I won't even sew a button back onto a shirt, because I know she'll do it properly with her sewing machine.
When she fixes something, it stays fixed.
It's wonderful having someone with those skills in the family, but her practical nature goes far beyond simple sewing jobs.
What always amazes me is the confidence she has.
If the washing machine breaks, she doesn't call a plumber.
She grabs a screwdriver and a torch and says, move out the way, I'll sort it.
Once, when the TV aerial fell in the middle of a storm, she was halfway up the roof in her slippers before anyone could stop her.
I sometimes think she secretly enjoys the challenge of fixing things more than the peace of having them work properly.
She's also fiercely competitive about her abilities.
If you even suggest hiring a professional, she takes it as a personal insult.
I once muttered, maybe we should get an electrician for this.
And she looked at me as if I'd just sworn in church.
Why would I pay someone for this when I can do it myself?
She snapped, before pulling a tangled mess of wires out of the wall and setting to work.
Somehow she made it all function again, though we did lose power to the bathroom for three weeks afterwards.
One afternoon we were having lunch at her countryside house when she started complaining about a problem they'd been having.
For the past few weeks, they'd been hearing scratching and scurrying sounds coming from the attic.
Living in the countryside means dealing with all sorts of wildlife, wandering into gardens and sometimes even into houses.
So this wasn't entirely unusual, but this time it was a weasel that had decided to make itself at home up there.
She clearly had a beef with this unwelcome guest.
At first I thought she was exaggerating.
Are you sure it's a weasel?
I asked.
Couldn't it just be a mouse?
She gave me the kind of look that mother-in-laws are famous for, and the one that says don't be ridiculous.
Then she launched into a full description of the creature.
Long, thin body, twitchy nose, bold enough to peek down the attic ladder as if it owned the place.
Apparently, it had even stolen a sock from the laundry basket.
What mouse steals socks? she demanded.
Fair point.
Now, most people would ring pest control at this point, but not my mother-in-law.
Perhaps she thought professional pest control would be inadequate for the job, or maybe she simply preferred to take matters into her own hands in the most extraordinary way.
You see, she has this habit of stockpiling various products in her garage.
Whenever she hears that a particular chemical or pesticide is being banned, she'll rush out and buy several bottles before it disappears from the shops.
Her garage is like a museum of questionable substances that probably shouldn't exist anymore.
I try not to ask too many questions about what's in there.
It's probably better not to know.
The garage itself is something to behold.
Shelves lined with bottles whose labels are peeling.
Cardboard boxes stuffed with gadgets from the 1970s.
Jars of screws, bolts and things I can't even identify.
It's like walking into an episode of Antiques Roadshow but with more danger.
Every time I open the door, I half expect something to explode.
She, of course, knows exactly where everything is.
Top shelf, behind the turpentine, next to the rat poison, she'll say.
As if that's the most natural sentence in the world.
Anyway, she found some kind of poison amongst her collection.
From the way she mentioned it, I got the impression that this was another one of those products that you're not supposed to have anymore.
She hard-boiled an egg, then somehow got hold of a syringe and carefully injected the poison into the yolk.
Then she placed the lethal egg up in the attic as bait for the weasel.
The way she described it was so casual, it was unsettling.
She explained it step by step, as if she were sharing a cake recipe.
First you boil the egg, then you peel a little hole, inject the mixture.
Meanwhile, I was trying not to drop my fork.
It was the first time I'd heard pest control explained with the same tone as baking a Victoria sponge.
The whole thing was rather surreal.
Discussing this over lunch whilst I was trying to eat.
Thankfully we weren't having hard-boiled eggs that day, or I might have started worrying about what she'd injected into our food.
I glanced at my plate of salad suspiciously anyway.
You can't be too careful, my partner whispered.
Don't worry, she wouldn't waste the poison on lettuce.
Not entirely comforting.
Apparently, the first attempt didn't work, but she persisted and tried again.
Sure enough, she managed to resolve the weasel problem completely.
I asked what happened to the weasel, but she waved her hand dismissively, as if to say don't ask questions you don't want the answers to.
To this day, I'm not sure whether it slunk away into the woods or whether she's secretly added its pelt to her collection of sewing materials.
It's quite impressive, really, in a slightly alarming way.
Most people would have called professionals, but my mother-in-law simply became the pest control service herself.
She can justly claim to be more efficient than most exterminators.
I'm fairly certain that if any other rodents decided to move into her attic, she's got plenty more tricks up her sleeve and probably the questionable chemicals to match.
And yet, the funniest part is how proud she is of the whole saga.
She'll retell it with a twinkle in her eye.
Most people would waste money on pest control, but not me.
I outsmarted the weasel.
You'd think she'd single-handedly won a war.
Neighbours come round for tea and she tells the story like a campfire tale, complete with hand gestures showing the weasel creeping about and her triumphant moment with the poisoned egg.
Sometimes I worry about what will happen when she runs out of attic-based enemies.
Will she go looking for foxes?
Badgers?
Who knows?
One thing's certain.
If I ever find myself in a survival situation, she's the person I want by my side.
Just don't let her near the eggs.
And that brings us to the end of today's slightly gruesome episode.
I do hope you found it useful.
Don't forget that you can get access to the transcript, to downloads and activities with comprehension questions and writing prompts, with the addition of AI feedback on your writing.
So if you're ready to take your listening that one step further, then consider joining the Podcast Plus membership.
I'll leave a link in the show notes.
Until next week take very good care of yourself and goodbye.
