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April 08, 2003
Mother Nature has been conspiring
Mother Nature has been conspiring against me. Nature and my dog abhor vacuums.
The first assault was the BFR (see previous posting). We keep a clean house, we have an aggressive dog, and I advocate peaceful coexistence with all living things--except for cockroaches and rats. This has not been an issue the entire time that I've lived here, even though Dan mentioned he had occasionally encountered a mouse before I moved into the loft. Apparently the prior loser slob slacker roommate Ralph attracted vermin, I only attracted botulism in the fridge.
Regardless, the rodent issue coalesced around a mutant rat who grew up eating babies and used nuclear waste. He/she/it only showed up at our place because of the challenge. The first evidence of our new roommate appeared just as Andrew moved into the loft. I can sleep through tornadoes and earthquakes, so he had to bring the encounters to my attention. Bear normally also tries to attack rats at night if she sees them, but she was avoiding this one.
Every single method to kill the rat didn't work. Traps were disarmed, poison was ingested and pooped, dogs were chicken. We spent two hours one night filling every wall with steel wool, it removed it and made decorative art. We filled the walls with foam, it tunneled through. We mixed steel wool AND foam, it went through another wall. Considering there is no food floating around the house that is readily available, every effort was made to simply show that rodent could outsmart homo sapien. Finally, Andrew removed all the baseboards, installed a solid 14 gauge metal sheet barrier, redid the foam, and reinstalled the baseboards. We heard some scratching over the next few nights, but the sacrificial babies we left down the block must have lured it away. I was going to use some of my students as bait, but even rats know when they're outmatched.
Posted by G at April 8, 2003 10:52 PM