A rat has taken up residence in my compost bin - a warm, comfy, secure, protected place where manna is tossed daily onto his head. In the mornings he is gone with no evidence of tunneling in or out. In the evenings his rotund, plump body sits there, waiting with greedy beady eyes for me to toss in dinner's debris.Bought a rat trap - do not want his children's cousins moving in.
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| in case you're wondering, he is not in this photo |
I love to walk through IKEA. If we need one or two specific things, we stay downstairs and go straight to the Marketplace. Otherwise, it will take a couple of hours to stroll through the room displays. What makes this room work? What do I love about this area? How could I duplicate this at home?
On one excursion, we were wandering through the kitchens, looking particularly at their storage ideas. One of the pleasant things about IKEA is its hands-on attitude. Touch it, sit on it, open it, inspect it. One kitchen had a pot on the stove top, its lid slightly tipped. Curiosity can be dangerous. I lifted the lid. Inside, an eight inch stuffed rat was curled up (they sell them as stuffed animals in the children's department). Its tail popped out of the pan as the lid came off.
Yes, I screamed. Two employees nearby snickered and giggled, laughing at my reaction. Apparently, I was the one caught in that rat trap.
I hear that chewing gum is very effective...they eat it and it expands, and then ....they die! Non-toxic too. You might want to try it. I have a funny story about rats; They love the prairie too! Anyway, Ken was so worried that the birds would starve during the winter, so he got a huge bag of bird seed and kept a steady spray of it thrown all over the yard for the entire winter. Come spring, we pulled our old car out of the garage and revved it up and started driving around ...not realizing that it had shredded rolls of paper towel in the back! One day I looked up and noticed the light fixture was full of bird seed!! I went in and told Ken..."Ken, we have a problem". By the end of that summer, he trapped 45 mice (?) in that one car...they loved the bird seed!!! We found that the sticky traps were far more effective than anything else we tried...if you can use poison (which is probably not safe around your home) "Just One Bite" is the best product anywhere, bar none!! It does what the name implies!! We have pack rats here too, so we always keep chunks of this stuff behind stove, refrigerator, basement cupboards, etc. But it is really dangerous around any animals or kids... Ok, good luck with your pursuit. And remember, where there is one......!!! Love, Gladys
ReplyDeleteHi Gladys! I like the gum idea, we'll try that. He (I assume it's a "he" - does that imply anything?) sprung the trap but didn't get caught. Now we have to outsmart him. That's funny about the mice. When we moved out of our house in Santa Maria, we found drawers in the garage full of dog food. They had stored up for a very long winter - resourceful little creatures.
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