Two days after we arrived we heard a clawing and gnawing noise coming from under our cabinets. A few days later we began to smell a horrible smell coming from the same area. We realized that a rat had gotten under the cabinets and died.
The day the kitchen was crawling with maggots was the day that Lincoln and my dad decided that it was time to get the rat out. They cut access holes in the bottoms of all of the lower kitchen cabinets. They found the dead rat, 3 live mice and numerous nests.
They cleaned everything out, sealed up all the holes and repaired the cabinets.
This picture shows a huge mess of sunflower seeds, maggots, plastic bags and other miscellaneous items used for nest making under the cabinet.
Here's Lincoln with the dead rat. That's what we had for dinner that night. (I'm joking.)
~Jenny
OK I could have handled the plastic bags and the seeds, but the maggots...not so much. You guys are troopers.
ReplyDeleteI read this to dh and he said, "speaking of which, I need to go check all our traps...."
ReplyDeleteThe day I'd found gnawed spots on the potatoes, I picked out the damaged spuds and put the rest in the fridge. The damaged parts were cut off, and I boiled them. Years ago I would have thrown them away, but I'd recently been listening to a retired gentleman tell stories of the food they ate while in prison camp in Vietnam. We ate the spuds.
Then dh put out traps. Also discovered that much of the wiring he installed last summer was chewed, as was the bathroom vents he'd installed just a few months ago. He replaced and repaired. There were trails all through the insulation up there in the attic, too.
Then there was the day I went out to get into my 5 gallon buckets of rice, flour, oatmeal... the flour had been emptied in November and was still empty. The rice bucket had very small gnaw marks at the top-- but the oatmeal bucket was gnawed so far that you could actually see through it a little bit!!! GROSS!!!! There was also scat here and there. NASTY. SO, I got a vacuum and sucked up all the plastic shreds, and then I got disinfectant wipes and thoroughly wiped down the outside of the bucket. Then I waited for DH to get home. He carefully pried the lid off, and inspected the contents- the bucket was nearly full. The contents seemed undisturbed, yet we carefully removed the top inch or two of oats and set them aside for the chickens. The rest of the oats went into a new container.
Think we're ready for missions work yet?
I don't know what I'd do if DH weren't willing to go up in that attic. My skin crawls just thinking about it. He proudly held up a catch in the trap one day and I SCREAMED. Like a scared little girl. Haha.
Um...okay - you are my hero! If it were me - the little girl in me wouldn't even be able to muster a scream of terror!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIck. That is all I'm going to say.