RAT!

We've had increasing noise in our ceiling and walls for some time from the rats and mice, but on the whole it's not bothered us and they don't tend to come in the house, so we let them get on with whatever it is they do. However, a couple of weeks ago all power was lost to the socket the computer uses and also the light on the bathroom mirror (wired up somewhere behind the wall, not visible socket). We realised that the rats/mice must have bitten through the wires. Anyway, Adrian re-routed the computer wiring under the carpet and through a wall to connect to a socket in our bedroom, couldn't do anything about the mirror light though.

We then decided we'd better do something about our lodgers as things could get worse. Adrian found some rat poison and went upstairs to where my folks live (we live downstairs) to put it down. Fortunately, there's a large hole in the floor under the table in the dining room which has been covered for sometime now with a peice of nailed-down plywood and a rug. Up the rug and the wood came and down under the floor went the poison. It was really smelly under there from all the animal droppings and wee and what have you, but the smell had not escaped into the house fortunately. After a couple of days, things finally went quiet in our walls and ceiling and we thought thats the end of that then. A couple of days after that, my parents part of the house began to stink to high heaven. Neutradol and open windows made no difference. The rug and the wood came up again, but nothing could be seen, and it was obvious that the smell was not coming from that area. Adrian sniffed around and reckoned he knew where it was coming from, which meant lifting the floorboards. Sure enough, giant foot-long stinky dead black rat. He tried to pick it up by its tail, but as it had already started decompossing, he was left with just the skin in his hand as the body fell away! It has now gone and the lights for the bathroom mirror have started working again...