Or, rather, Kat and rat.
Was woken up last Tuesday by a strange sound. The storage shed has a tin roof and is attached to the side of the house where my bedroom is, and provides that nice rain on a tin roof sound when it’s raining; so I thought at first it might be rain… but, no, it seemed to be coming from the kitchen. I groggily get up- it’s around 3 in the morning- and head to the kitchen, where I realize that it’s something crunching plastic under the kitchen sink. Open the under-sink cabinet and find a chewed-up roach bait in pieces on the floor.
Huh. OK, so mice apparently like the bait in roach traps. And bread, as I find a small hole gnawed in a loaf of bread in the pantry. So, Flen buys some mouse traps, I bait them with peanut butter, and spread them around where I think they’ll do the most good.
Woken up that morning at the ass-crack of dawn, again, by crunching noises. Wait to hear a *snap* from one of the traps, but… nothing. Grab a flashlight and sneak into the kitchen and snatch the cabinet open, to see a large tail disappearing into the wall through the hole left around the sink drain pipe. OK… this isn’t a mouse, this is a freakin’ rat; and a large one at that. And he’s licked the peanut butter off of every one of the mouse traps without setting them off. I check the cabinet under the bathroom sink, where I had placed other traps, and notice the floor is wet… there’s also a supply line leaking under this sink. (side note; this house was re-plumbed at some point with flexible piping called Qest Pipe that’s no longer sold because it’s- surprise surprise- prone to leaks, among other things.)Â Wonderful. And, there aren’t any individual shutoffs anywhere in the house, so I have to shut the water off at the street.
Can’t get back to sleep, and I want to spend some time with Flen before he heads off on vacation, so I take a personal day from work and call the landlord about the leak; then go find the biggest damn glue traps and rat traps I can and set them out where I know he travels. And wait. Nothing Thursday night, but he’s eating the other roach baits and avoiding the traps altogether. Friday night, quite far into my martinis and movie watching, I hear him again. I snatch up the pellet pistol and flashlight I had nearby for just such an occasion and sneak into the kitchen. Sure enough, I can see a tail peeking out from under one side of the refrigerator. I aim the pellet gun under the fridge and fire off a couple of pellets, then peek around the other side to catch him if he bolts… nothing. Because he was escaping around the other side. I watch him disappear around the corner.
OK… no more mister nice guy. Bought a bunch of rat poison and set it under the sinks. I haven’t got any pets to worry about eating it, so no worries there. As of today he’s eaten three of the four blocks I set out… the hunt continues. “No body, no body-count”