More barricading is obviously called for
We decide to board off what we perceive as the main entrance to the under the hall floorboard area. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Still two traps – one under the kitchen floor and one in the back room. Decide to put the under kitchen floor one above the floor – perhaps it never used the superhighway – to see if that improves our chances. Build a little box to put it in so that there’s no danger of it approaching it from the wrong end and triggering it from the back. Go to bed.
S goes to bathroom and says he can hear a hell of a noise from downstairs. We’re too frightened to go and look so shut bedroom door so we can’t hear it. Next morning we discover the cause of all the noise. It’s eaten its way through the floorboards. There’s a tale on a website of some folks who scoured a flat looking for a hole where a rat could have got in only to find it had gnawed it’s way vertically straight up through two inches of oak floorboard. We now believe this story. This is now a tale of how to exist on plastic and wood – not your average diet for sure.
Invest in third rat trap, hoping against hope that one of them will work. Folks in the hardware shop, whilst naturally glad of the trade in this economic clime, must think I’m desperate. Balance of probability is that they’re right. Now have three traps, at all strategic points, they’re all VERY poised to go, as in that still hurts!
Saturday 26 September 2009
Friday 11 September 2009
How desperate can a rat get?
No evidence of interest in traps, but following morning discovered a cookery book had been half pulled out from the ones that were lying on top of the books in the bookshelf in the hall. No humans admitted moving it, after all why should they?, so pushed it back in and carried on.
Following morning discovered MORE cookery books half pulled out. Not so much that they fell on the floor, mind you, just about half way out. How bizarre! It’s as if the rat can’t find any ACTUAL food, and is having to make do with PICTURES OF FOOD instead. Had a quick look but there really wasn’t any evidence of real food there, so pushed the books back again.
Day 3 of the cookery book saga and yep, you guessed it, more cookery books but this time they’ve reached the floor. This is getting truly weird! And then I discovered the only thing it could have been after, which is a measure of just how desperate it must be and how very acute its sense of smell must be. On top of the cookery books was a well pressed spaghetti wrapper which I must have saved because of a recipe on it. It was empty but the way it had been pressed between books meant it was empty before Ratty got to it. But even more incredibly the sell by date on the packet was April 1995 – fourteen years ago! The price ticket is for not just the previous incarnation of the supermarket chain, but the one before that.
No evidence of interest in traps, but following morning discovered a cookery book had been half pulled out from the ones that were lying on top of the books in the bookshelf in the hall. No humans admitted moving it, after all why should they?, so pushed it back in and carried on.
Following morning discovered MORE cookery books half pulled out. Not so much that they fell on the floor, mind you, just about half way out. How bizarre! It’s as if the rat can’t find any ACTUAL food, and is having to make do with PICTURES OF FOOD instead. Had a quick look but there really wasn’t any evidence of real food there, so pushed the books back again.
Day 3 of the cookery book saga and yep, you guessed it, more cookery books but this time they’ve reached the floor. This is getting truly weird! And then I discovered the only thing it could have been after, which is a measure of just how desperate it must be and how very acute its sense of smell must be. On top of the cookery books was a well pressed spaghetti wrapper which I must have saved because of a recipe on it. It was empty but the way it had been pressed between books meant it was empty before Ratty got to it. But even more incredibly the sell by date on the packet was April 1995 – fourteen years ago! The price ticket is for not just the previous incarnation of the supermarket chain, but the one before that.
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