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Three days three rats. Two traps, and one by dog or cat.
We'll recall that I allowed a rat infestation to go on because I am a wuss. I am also moderately allergic to rats. I would say severely because they make me very ill but a severe allergy means anaphylactic shock and that. I could go into detail about how sick they make me, but let's not. Suffice to say I don' go into cute little pet stores anymore, and in the great big one I only go into the dog and cat part and even so my skin itches. And when we had pet rats I was sick all the time for the duration. Again, no details.
I bought a fancy easy-set plastic rat trap. Just one because it was more expensive than rhe classic kind. It was a bust. It sprang while I was setting it into place and would not set again -- it looked like the lock broke when it sprang (it was meant to be easily disposed of). It was by Ortho, in case you're looking at rat traps and want to know what not to get.
I bought four old-fashioned rat traps. I couldn't set them: the locking bar wouldn't go where it seemed to have to go according to the not-detailed instructions and the tiny illegible picture, and my hands are not strong enough to hold the thing down for long periods while I try different approaches. I had a meltdown. I was getting so sick and I couldn't take the steps I needed to cure myself. I had waited so long my house was probably infested with a thousand of them. I had let my hands get weak. You know the scene, even if the details are idiosyncratic. I called my friend Mary in Boston and actually cried: not something I do much.
She said: you have a son-in-law. I called Emma and they both came and set three of the rat traps. Caught a rat under the stove that night, but one trap got robbed and not sprung. (one trap was placed in a less likely spot: I need to remove that one, since it has not been visited) I re-baited the unsprung trap. Next morning it was robbed and unsprung again. Emma came and set the other one. I took her home and went to the store: when I got home an hour later there was another dead rat.
That was last night. I figured I would buy a lot of rat traps today and just keep setting them until there seems to have been no rats for a good long time. But there wasn't a new one to set.
But also last night the dogs had another one of their periodic barking fests -- the night before it seemed to be about cats fighting somewhere in the block (not my cat, who was sleeping on my pillow) or maybe about the large dog who was commenting on it all. This morning there was a dead rat. I don't know who killed it, I think it was the extra dog, because she was pretty excited about it. I told the dogs generally and also the cat how wonderful it was that there was a dead rat. picked the thing up in a plastic bag, cleaned the floor in that area and realized I should mop the whole floor (construction, unseasonable rain, and inside-outside carnivores means I should be mopping almost every day, but instead I mop less than a normal person).
Right now my hands and face are itching, and my weird involuntary morality gland is pumping some kind of guilt and horror hormone through me (it is so selfish of me to value my health above the lives of innocent vermin!), but otherwise I'm feeling pretty good. I wonder if the smell of dead rat from the traps has encouraged the carnivores to do their duty. They didn't seem interested before, even when I was yelling impotently at the rats a week or two ago.
On another front: I have much better dreams in my own bed. And by better, I mean more detailed, with richer plots and characterization and setting. And I remember them better.
On still another front: we're still getting rain. I think we went two whole weeks without it. This breaks the seasonal pattern. The last two? years, the early-winter dry spell was long and scary. Are we moving to a dry winter-wet summer climate? That would be disastrous for our local plants and animals, who are adapted to a wet winter-dry summer climate.
We'll recall that I allowed a rat infestation to go on because I am a wuss. I am also moderately allergic to rats. I would say severely because they make me very ill but a severe allergy means anaphylactic shock and that. I could go into detail about how sick they make me, but let's not. Suffice to say I don' go into cute little pet stores anymore, and in the great big one I only go into the dog and cat part and even so my skin itches. And when we had pet rats I was sick all the time for the duration. Again, no details.
I bought a fancy easy-set plastic rat trap. Just one because it was more expensive than rhe classic kind. It was a bust. It sprang while I was setting it into place and would not set again -- it looked like the lock broke when it sprang (it was meant to be easily disposed of). It was by Ortho, in case you're looking at rat traps and want to know what not to get.
I bought four old-fashioned rat traps. I couldn't set them: the locking bar wouldn't go where it seemed to have to go according to the not-detailed instructions and the tiny illegible picture, and my hands are not strong enough to hold the thing down for long periods while I try different approaches. I had a meltdown. I was getting so sick and I couldn't take the steps I needed to cure myself. I had waited so long my house was probably infested with a thousand of them. I had let my hands get weak. You know the scene, even if the details are idiosyncratic. I called my friend Mary in Boston and actually cried: not something I do much.
She said: you have a son-in-law. I called Emma and they both came and set three of the rat traps. Caught a rat under the stove that night, but one trap got robbed and not sprung. (one trap was placed in a less likely spot: I need to remove that one, since it has not been visited) I re-baited the unsprung trap. Next morning it was robbed and unsprung again. Emma came and set the other one. I took her home and went to the store: when I got home an hour later there was another dead rat.
That was last night. I figured I would buy a lot of rat traps today and just keep setting them until there seems to have been no rats for a good long time. But there wasn't a new one to set.
But also last night the dogs had another one of their periodic barking fests -- the night before it seemed to be about cats fighting somewhere in the block (not my cat, who was sleeping on my pillow) or maybe about the large dog who was commenting on it all. This morning there was a dead rat. I don't know who killed it, I think it was the extra dog, because she was pretty excited about it. I told the dogs generally and also the cat how wonderful it was that there was a dead rat. picked the thing up in a plastic bag, cleaned the floor in that area and realized I should mop the whole floor (construction, unseasonable rain, and inside-outside carnivores means I should be mopping almost every day, but instead I mop less than a normal person).
Right now my hands and face are itching, and my weird involuntary morality gland is pumping some kind of guilt and horror hormone through me (it is so selfish of me to value my health above the lives of innocent vermin!), but otherwise I'm feeling pretty good. I wonder if the smell of dead rat from the traps has encouraged the carnivores to do their duty. They didn't seem interested before, even when I was yelling impotently at the rats a week or two ago.
On another front: I have much better dreams in my own bed. And by better, I mean more detailed, with richer plots and characterization and setting. And I remember them better.
On still another front: we're still getting rain. I think we went two whole weeks without it. This breaks the seasonal pattern. The last two? years, the early-winter dry spell was long and scary. Are we moving to a dry winter-wet summer climate? That would be disastrous for our local plants and animals, who are adapted to a wet winter-dry summer climate.
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The cut-tag works perfectly, just in case you were wondering and that wasn't just a rhetorical question.
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I got a Havahart live-trap squirrel trap, and on the first day alone caught six rats. At that point I was just walking over to the railroad tracks and dumping them out again, but other times I would dump them in the backyard right in front of a rat-catching/eating cat.
I'm a vegetarian who likes all kinds of animals, but rats and mice have destroyed so many things in my house that they really can't happily coexist here in the same way that the raccoons and possums and skunks can.
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I am so allergic to rats and mice that I should really have a constant alert about them.