When I was growing up there was a popular television show called "The Rat Patrol," about soldiers roaming the African desert in jeeps during WWII, also "The Rat Pack," Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, being cool and hanging out in Vegas. But this post isn't about them.
There are things I find myself doing living in a rural area here at Struan Farm that I never envisioned myself having to do. Mostly things I never thought about growing up in a suburban and then urban environment. Jobs that just must get done, without fanfare, to keep the household and farm on the rails. One of those relates to rats and mice, especially at this time of the year. We did have mice in the cellar of our house growing up, but they tended to hide in the dog kibble and scurry away, weren't ever to be seen in any other areas of the house.
Here at the farm we regularly set mouse traps between guest visits at the Cottage in autumn and spring, since guests tend to leave doors open and mice make a beeline for the warmth inside. Evidence can sometimes be found that they've managed to get inside, but even if we don't see that around we set traps baited with peanut butter. Nothing worse than hearing the pitter patter of little feet in the kitchen at night, is there? Rats are around in the bush, and we don't want anyone having a close encounter with them, ever. John and I had a memorable night in the Cottage during our renovations where I ended up having to stand on the toilet with the door closed while a rat waited for its escape route to be available. I screamed while John laughed his head off. To avoid any incidents we put poison underneath both the Homestead and the Cottage every few months.
This week I was on my own for a few nights with John up north at meetings. (Thankfully he's home now.) On those nights he's away I tend to stay up late catching up on my reading list. But I also hear every creak in the house, and definitely don't sleep as well as when he's home snoring beside me.
One night this week there were other noises. Rustlings and bumps under the house, which meant only one thing: rats. I kept turning on the lights and walking around to discourage them, but they continued until 3 a.m. at which point I collapsed into an exhausted sleep.
The next morning I was on the job:
Rat poison, yep. There are fancier "rat motels," plastic boxes into which the poison is threaded on wires, but we find a board with the poison nailed on works fine. The things one learns on the job! The poison has to be fastened down or the rats take it back to their nests and hoard it rather than nibble it and head off to that great rat nest in the sky. Of course I wear gloves, and of course this gets slipped under the house where Clifford can't get anywhere near it.
This will teach those rats to mess with my sleep, won't it? As an aside, we are trapping rats in our bush areas as well. They're a threat to native birds and now that the possum numbers are down this is the next pest in the firing line. So no misguided sympathy for the rats, okay?
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