Worst Housemate Ever

We live in an old house in the country, and it’s normal in the winter to hear rodents running around the ceiling between the sitting room and the bedrooms above.

But in January they started to get bold.

I’ve killed dozens of mice and rats in Santa Cruz. I know all about them. I knew what to do. I got a bunch of traps at the Co-op and killed a few mice. Victory!

But then there was this.

And they started eating the sitting room door if we closed it at night.

These weren’t mice. They kept coming. 

I replaced the mousetraps with rat traps, but the rats had already learned how to avoid them. 

So I called a professional. Ben of Alklear Pest Control in Fintown. His facebook page is hilarious, but don’t click the link if you can’t handle seeing dead rats held up by their tails. (A post from this week: “Mondays special being transported into the hearse, mass this Wednesday @11 all welcome.”)

He set up a few traps in the hall and bathroom, and neatly covered each one in a cardboard cowling. 

They chewed more holes in the carpet to avoid the traps. Then they chewed holes into the kitchen.

Ben put a trap on that hole above the cupboard, so they chewed a hole in the ceiling across the room, somehow knowing if they did, they could use the drying rack to get to the floor. 

I put a piece of duct tape over the hole. They chewed through it. 

So I got super-clever and taped a flattened cider can over the hole. 

They chewed another hole. Ben eventually did some kind of fantastic anti-rodent engineering to secure the ceiling hole, but now that they had found the kitchen, they got into the food. 

We moved most of the pantry to the back seat of the car. The bread spent every night in the fridge, which made for sad sandwiches. 

They got into the liquor. 

They started eating the lids off the cans.

Ben was coming by a few times a week. He had an arsenal of traps and explained how he uses different traps to kill immature rats because they feed differently than adult rats.

He would talk to himself, working out the spacial geometry of the rats’ world, predicting their movements as he blocked one hole after another. 

He trapped a female rat and four babies.

But then.

Ben said it was “Some buck.”

I thanked Ben many times for coming out so much, because this kind of service isn’t what I came to expect in Santa Cruz. He said, “Oh aye, it’s personal.”

We had to put the bar of soap at the sink into a plastic container because he was eating it. He ate the silicon spatulas and the handle of the scissors. 

He ate the labels off the glass jars left in the pantry.

He chewed a hole under the cupboard, and just for fun, I taped another cider can over it. You know what happened. Ben put a board over the hole he chew in the aluminum. The rat pushed that board away, so I nailed it in. You know what happened. The texts below were sent on two successive mornings. 

The rat was getting desperate. One morning I came in to find he had muscled open the cupboard and pushed a flour bin off the shelf again.

Ben said it was “A buck and a half.”

Finally, Ben cornered the rat to one cupboard under the sink, and we secured its doors at night with chairs. There was no way out but through a trap. 

The next day, I pulled the chair away and peaked inside. 

Artemis was so happy. 

I’m proud to say Ben featured us on his facebook page. 

Ben said to leave out a little dry porridge if we hear rodents in the house again. Mice will eat only the seed and leave the husk behind. Rats eat the whole thing, leaving the plate clean. 

He made me promise to never set another mouse trap.