The Rodenator comes to Boulder: Top five varmint killers

​Some people in incorporated Boulder County are dealing with their pesky prairie dog problems by blowing the fuckers up with something called The Rodenator. Other people wish they wouldn't, since it turns their block into a mini suburban Baghdad, complete with flaming, screaming animals running down the street. In honor of this vindictive hunt, the top five varmint killers in history.

5. Agent J in Men In Black
Not all the aliens need stamping out, but some of them do. And when a giant, man-eating, world-dominating bug shows up, We trust no one more than Will Smith to plaster a national landmark with its guts and subsequently record a hit rap record about it. God damn, he is so cool.

4. Mouse Trap
This game is 98 percent set up and 2 percent payoff, but when you're a little kid, these sorts of things are the pinnacle of entertainment. You could argue that there's no actual varmint death involved, but we like to imagine it's implied that getting caught in the Rube Goldberg-ian trap was the end of the line for any plastic mouse.

3. The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Fun fact: The legend of the Pied Piper was originally that he was an expert rat catcher, hired to lure the beasts out of a town in Germany. When they failed to pay him for his services, he lured their children instead. Some have suggested its an allegory for the plague, which we always sort of assumed was generally a positive thing for rat populations. Either way, fairy tales were a lot creepier before Disney wandered along.

2. The Rodenator
The Rodenator works by injecting a varmint's hole with oxygen and propane and then lighting it up. The best part of this thing, however, is how vindictive its parent company is about marketing the thing. Probably best to go with measured and sober when you're selling a product like this, rather than setting your commercial to James Bond theme music and using words like "revenge." This is pest control, not war. And now that we know, from the Daily Camera story, that the thing occasionally just torches the rodents and leaves them above ground, going down in flames and screaming about it, we're sort of inclined to agree with the traumatized neighbors.

1. Carl Spackler in Caddyshack
He may not have been the most effective varmint killer, but Carl Spackler will always be the patron saint of pest control. No one did an evil woodshed monologue like him.