Apparently...

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*

Eaten alive

WARNING. If reading about infestations gives you the heebie jeebies then stop here.

Ok, you were warned.

We've been away for the weekend to visit friends, and I'll do a post about that soon. For those of you not in the UK the weather has been roasting (for here) all weekend and today.

We got home this evening around 9:45pm and I immediately took Ewok off upstairs for a bath. I'd taken his clothes off in the living room, and while the bath was running we both wandered into the main bedroom so I could open windows as the room was baking (it's in the roof). When we got back into the bathroom I was about to take his nappy off and pop him in the bath when, to my horror, I saw that his legs were covered in fleas!

Looking down I saw that I was similarly infested (I'd taken my trousers off to bath him because he splashes, a lot) and I immediately started plucking them off him and crushing them. In the end there were so many of them, and while I was delousing him the b$%&@ds were munching on me, I just lobbed him in the bath and washed them off him, then left him splashing while I killed the ones left on me. Then I had to shout for Wookiee to watch him while I got my big can-o-flea-killer and sprayed the bedroom, the landing, the stairs, the hallway and even the living room.

I think the bedroom was worst because the cats are not allowed in there unless accompanied, so the fleas had hatched out (thanks to the heat) and had nothing to feed on until Ewok and I walked in.

It's my own fault for not treating the cats for fleas sooner. I noticed they were scratching several weeks ago, but I've been so busy I didn't go to the vets to get some more flea treatment. You can be sure I'll be going there tomorrow, to get that and a new big can-o-flea-killer as that stuff prevents (re)infestations of eggs and larvae for 12 months, and fleas for 2 months. So the whole house is getting dosed, there's still a floor to do and the can I have is almost empty. Fortunately there doesn't seem to have been any hatching on the lower ground floor as that floor stays relatively cool, except for two rooms into which the cats never go.

Ewok and I are now covered in bites, him mostly from the waist down, me around my feet and ankles, with several more up my legs, arms, and on my back, and I'm itching all over from the thought of them as much as the actual bites. On top of that I'm mildly allergic to cat fleas, I get hayfever-like symptoms when I get bitten, the more bites the worse the reaction, so I'll be buying some antihisthamine pills tomorrow as well. I dabbed witch hazel all over his bites and mine. It's not helping me much but it seems to have helped him. We'll see what he's like in the morning.

If you've managed to make it this far then I suspect you're now joining me in some sympathetic scratching.

Urgh *shudder* fleas!

All go

It's busy busy busy here at the moment. We are in the process of cleaning the place up in preparation to put it up for sale at the end of this month. Part of this involves getting the decorators in to redecorate the whole place, top to bottom, walls, ceilings and woodwork. All in a nice shade of Barley White for the walls and White everywhere else.

So far they've done the main bedroom and bathroom and all the hallways and the difference is amazing. When we moved in, most of the house was painted in a mustardy yellow, except the main bedroom and bathroom which were painted a sunny yellow (methinks the previous owners either liked yellow, or got a job lot of paint). I'm not a fan of yellow but it wasn't unliveable, so we put up with it. Now I'm wishing we'd had this done sooner so we could get the benefit of it ourselves. The hallways in particular are so much brighter now.

We've also got the insurance people in to look at where one of the showers had been leaking for some time without us noticing. It's seeped into the room beyond (it's an en-suite to the fourth bedroom) and damaged the walls, skirting board and carpet. We spotted it some time ago and stopped using it, but as everything dried out, the walls and skirting warped and cracked. We were all set to get it sorted when Wookiee suggested that it might all be covered on the insurance, so I called them up and amazingly it is. So far I've had four visits from various people, assessing the damage, putting in dyring equipment and then taking it away again, taking bits of carpet, etc... Sometime this week I've got some people coming to try and trace where the leak was coming from (duh, the shower), and then of course, once all the people have been and assessed and done their thang, we'll have people to come and rip it all out and replace it. I wanted to get this done before we had people coming to look at the place but it's not going to happen that quickly. Hopefully it won't put people off.

And finally...

Ewok is fully recovered from his lurgi. The temp of 102F was the worst of it. He was still a bit feverish and grumpy the next day, and wasn't much better for having had no sleep. Then we both slept like the dead the next night and all was right with the world again.

Of course it doesn't last and this morning I've had to call NHS Direct for advice when I caught him eating cat poop (eeeeeeeeeewwwww!) I'm assuming one of the cats had a little bit caught in their skirts and it fell off in the living room, and of course Ewok's at the 'everything goes in the mouth' stage. To give him credit he did look utterly disgusted by the taste, and allowed me to fish it out of his mouth again, but I had no idea what (if anything) he'd swallowed, and being aware of the dangers of toxoplasmosis, I wanted to know if I needed to worry and what I needed to watch out for.

As it turns out, fresh cat poop is safe to eat (blech), it's only if it's 2-3 weeks old that you need to worry. The nurse I spoke to was very nice and gave me some symptoms to watch out for over the next 3 weeks, if they occur then I have to take him to the GP, and the treatment is antibiotics for 3 weeks!

KIDS!

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.