Verminii Eradicus

Or at least I bloody well hope so.

You may recall I've posted before about a small mouse problem we were having in our house. A wee blighter that was managing to elude capture and removal. We did think that Wookiee had managed to get rid of it at one point (I'll post separately about Big Bad Wookiee Chasee Mousie) but when we started seeing and hearing the signs again soon after, we just assumed the blasted thing had got back in somehow.

A few days ago, after some more research into humane(ish) ways of catching pestiferous small fuzzies, I ordered some glue traps from Amazon (of all places) and put one down in a spot where I was almost certain it would catch it eventually. This was on the kitchen worktop, where it butts up against the fridge freezer (the bugger was climbing up behind the f/f).

Aaanyway, about an hour ago, I was sat in bed reading when I heard a minor clatter from downstairs. Assuming cat related shennanigins I ignored it once I determined that it hadn't disturbed Ewok. About 20 mins later there was a far worse clattering and sound of empty bottles and cans hitting tile. This was my first clue that the trap may have caught something as there were several empties on the same surface as the trap.

So I trotted off downstairs to find all three cats lurking just outside the kitchen door. I switched on the light and saw that I had indeed caught the nefarious little git that'd been causing so much trouble.

Now you'll have to excuse me my language while I get this out of my system. You see I hadn't caught a mouse...


IT WAS A FUCKING RAT!!!!!


IN MY HOUSE!!!!


*ahem*

Sorry, I'm still a little freaked out by it all actually.

Of course having caught said rat, I now had to dispose of said rat, preferably a few miles from home. At 3 o-clock in the frikkin morning. In. My. Nightie.

Having awoken Wookiee for emotional support as much as anything else, I managed to transfer rat and glue mat into a convenient Really Useful box* for the trip. Then I pulled on a pair of trousers, grabbed a bottle of oil (to release the rat from the glue, it's how it works), a torch and my cardi (it's cold and v windy outside), loaded everything into the car and set off into the night.

I drove to the next village, about 3 miles away, and parked up in the end of a track leading off across some farmland, unloaded the box and dumped the rat out. I then proceeded to try and pour oil onto the glue round the rat's feet and tail, without getting too close. This was made more interesting by the strong wind blowing the oil sideways, but I got there in the end and Meester Rat scurried off into the night minus some fur and a bit of blood (not sure why, but there was blood on the trap). I then chucked everything back in the car and went home.

As you can imagine I'm blogging this now because frankly, I'm wide awake, and I still need to get over the fact that it was a FREAKING RAT in my house, and not just a mouse. I know mice are disgusting, dirty and disease ridden as well, but they just don't creep me out the way rats do. I should also point out that it wasn't a full-grown rat, otherwise I don't think the trap would have caught it, it only being designed for mice. However I can say that the glue traps do work, very well indeed, and they're a damn sight cheaper than some of the other options.



* They really are really useful *grin*

Mice eat Bombay Mix

Who knew?

Apparently they also eat tuc crackers (cheese flavour crackers for the non-UKers), which I suppose isn't so surprising.

Of course you're wondering how I know all this, well we have a mouse, or maybe meeces, it's hard to tell if there's just one or more. As far as we can tell they're getting in through some holes that have been drilled into the outside of the kitchen wall. We had no idea they were there, and we don't know why they're there, but there they are, and according to the pest control guy who came to take a look, they're big enough for meeces to get through.

The first indication we had that there were rodents of some kind in the house was hearing scrabbling, skittering and gnawing in the ceiling voids at night. Kind of creepy when you hear it at 2am and don't know what it is. Some of you will probably say it's creepy when you do know what it is, but I don't really have a problem with mice per se. I have three cats, I'm used to them bringing rodents of all kinds into the house, dead and alive. I have to say the dead rat did creep me out a little, but not half as much as the live one, especially as it was big enough to escape back through the catflap on it's own.

The next thing I found was when I went into my baking cupboard. Bear in mind I haven't actually done any baking since we moved here, so the contents of this cupboard haven't really been disturbed for a while. I pulled the first bag of flour out and discovered that the whole of the bag of the bag had been destroyed and there was flour everywhere. Further investigation showed that the mice have a taste for plain and self raising flour, caster sugar, and icing sugar.

I cleared all the mess out and noticed that the back of the cupboard isn't solid all the way up (it's a floor cupboard by the way), there's a gap at the top, obviously where it/they had been getting in. I bought new baking products and relocated their storage, leaving the area where they had been, empty. The rest of the cupboard contains bottles of alcohol, and quite frankly if the little buggers can gnaw their way through the bottles then they're welcome to get, well, I suppose rat-arsed would be the appropriate term.

The next attack came on the fruit bowl. I guess they were getting desparate now. Several old apples had teeth marks and there were little bitty bits of apple all over the worktop behind the bowl. More cleaning and moving and now the little buggers really had to get clever.

This morning I found Ewok's bottle of medicine had fallen on the worktop from the corner shelf where it lives. Then I noticed that all the empty egg boxes that I store on top of the fridge/freezer had been disturbed. So I got the steps and climbed up for a better look. We keep the crisps, biscuits, cakes etc on top of the fridge. There had been a half pack of tuc crackers up there, now there were only crumbs and shredded bits of plastic packaging. More cleaning up and securing of foodstuffs in boxes. I also decided to tidy up the corner shelves where the medicines are kept and that was when I found the bombay mix debris. It had been put up on one of the shelves and forgotten about, again it had been about half full, and the little buggers had scoffed the lot!

Part of me is intrigued to see what they're going to find to eat now. They've got until the weekend, because that's when we're going shopping for traps*, and something to fill in the holes.



* Yes, humane ones, alright.

Close encounters of the critter kind

It's been a very busy and eventful day. We've been over to Lincoln to test drive and then buy a new (to us) car. On the waay home we decided to try and find somewhere to eat out, which proved to be more difficult than it really should. I'll save expanding on these for another post. What I want to write about now is what happened after we got home again.

It was around 8:30pm when we finally made it home (we'd been out since about 1pm) and we'd been home for about an hour when I remembered I had some fabrics that needed rinsing out. So I popped downstairs to the utility room. When I got down to the hallway I heard a funny noise coming from the direction of the back door. In the gloom I could see what looked like Smurf hunkered down behind a box in the corridor. I switched the light on and discovered that it wasn't Smurf at all. It was a duckling.

I called upstairs to Wookiee and asked him to come down and bring the back door key with him, then I grabbed a towel off the pile waiting to be laundered and gently captured the duckling for release back into the wild.

My original plan was to pop it onto our little pond to give it chance to recover and then make it's own way back down to the river, but I've recently been decomissioning the pond in preparation for filling it in completely, and once I got out there I realised there just wasn't enough water in it to keep the duckling safe from my cats. So I asked Wookiee to bring me my shoes (I was barefoot at this point) so I could take it all the way down to the river. As I was standing there slipping the shoes on, I looked down at the ducking and the towel and to my horror saw several long, black, hairy legs peeping over a fold in the towel. Now I have a lot of experience with crawlies of the 8-legged variety (too bloody much experience in my opinion) and recognised right away that this was one of our larger garden variety spider. We're talking about 2" across, which may not seem like a lot to those of you who live in parts of the world where tarantulas roam wild (you have my total sympathy Suz), but for the UK, that's big.

Once again I managed to hold it together enough to not just fling towel, spider and ducking away from me, and just exclaimed in such a way as to let Wookiee know that there was a spider in close proximity (something along the lines of Oh Jesus F-ing Christ! IIRC) and he managed to flick the spider away from me by pinging the towel sharply.

This taken care of I then proceeded to navigate the jungle wilderness that is our garden (the grass has only been cut once and it's back up to about 3 foot), and safely release the duckling back onto the river, where it paddled off cheeping for it's mum.

One might think that this was enough critter excitement for one day, but there was more to come later.

After Ewok had been put to bed, Wookiee decided to wander down to his swamp and then to bed, and I headed for the kitchen to get my bowl of cereal (for my supper) as I was opening the kitchen door I heard a voice from below calling me to come and deal with something else.

This one was a little easier. A poor wee field mousie that one of the cats had brought in. Totally unscathed and skittering around the hallway. We managed to corner it with some boxes and then I grabbed it by the tail and popped it out through the catflap to scurry to freedom.

Job done, I headed back upstairs and into the cloakroom to wash my hands. Lather, rinse, grab towel, pull towel towards me through the towel ring, see long, black, hairy legs hove into view over the top of the towel, yelp and curse, run for Wookiee.

Yes, it was the same cloakroom and yes, it was another of the very large garden variety spider. Hugs were required after that one had been dealt with by my big strong hero.

Can I have a few spider-free days please.

I am a mole, and I live in a...

...box?



This is my latest 'rescue', it being that time of year once again. The time when the new arrivals in the world of fauna take their first tottering steps, hops or flights into the world. Only to be pounced on by one of my cats.

I was in the utility room doing another batch of dyeing, when I heard the squeaking of some poor hapless furry thing out in the hallway. Rushing out to see what small rodent they'd caught this time, I was greeted with a total absence of moggies, nary a fuzzbutt in sight. Then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and spotted this fellow scurrying round the base of their scratching post. I quickly scooped him up and popped him in a very handy nearby box. I don't know how long he'd been hiding behind or under something. It must have been a while for the cats to have given up waiting.

Anyway, I took the requisite photo's before taking him outside and releasing him back into the garden. Unfortunately due to his scurrying around, this is the only one that came out well.