Well, I haven’t blogged much personal the last day or two because nothing has really been going on. Just staying home, doing the wifely thing and all. But, now I have something mildly irritating to report.
I think I smell a rat.
Or more precisely, Tim discovered a rat tonight. ARGH. We’ve been through this before, for those of you who don’t know. A year or two ago, we had a huge one (maybe more) that was apparently living in our attic. One of them died and we suddenly smelled a stench in a certain part of the house, where he was dead right above in the attic. Anyway, Tim was convinced they were getting into the attic via the chimeny, and its rotting masonite-type facing. I *thought* we had fixed that problem last year when we had vinyl siding put on the house. Tim assured me then that we shouldn’t have rats in the attic any more. And that’s not where he found one, so he was probably right on target with that. He found one, where believe it or not, he has found one before, before the attic incident. Living in our gas grill.
ICK!
They apparently like to nest in our grill in the winter, we had this problem a couple of years ago. The things were trying to build a nest in the base, under the burner, and Tim found it, put out a bunch of rat poison and we haven’t had that problem since. Until tonight. Tim went to grill out some chicken for us, and found a nest in the grill again. Actually, he said he saw the rat, said he was big and fat. HMMPH. I bet, feasting off no telling what around here. He had built a nest out of the expensive landscape fabric we used when we built the deck. We bought a roll of that stuff to cover the edges of the patio, where grass was growing, and where we were building the deck on top of, because we knew that since grass had been there for years, it would probably continue to grow and come up through the deck. So we put a bunch of black landscape fabric out. Tim found a huge wad of it, ripped to shreds, in the bottom of the grill. A nice warm nest. What’s worse, is that last summer I got him a really nice, heavy duty, thick grill cover for his grill. The darn rat chewed several holes in the grill cover to get in and out of the grill to his nest. ARGH. I do hate critters. If its not snakes I’m worried about, then there are frogs jumping around, big black birds in my bird feeders, black cats crawling all over my deck, fence and yard, and now rats all over the place. Heaven help me, why are there so many critters in suburbia? Please, make them go away!
yuck, hate rats! maybe you should move the grill to the garage for the winter.
and as for blackbirds at your bird feeder, i told you….get one of those squirrel proof bird feeders where the bar closes when something heavy gets on it, then big birds won’t eat all the bird seed! easy solution for that!
the cats are probably harmless….plus, they do kill rats and mice! so, they can be helpful! that might be why they are around, to hunt the rat!
These critters are in suburbia because they have no place else to go. That area used to be their home, remember. So “whatta gonna do” as they say in these parts.
Get an Orkin contract…….it’s worth it.
SKP
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