We have rats in the house. For about a month or so we have occasionally been awakened in the wee hours of the morning by a rustling noise emanating from near the ridge beam. When the roof was replaced, the workers did not clean the dead leaves off the ridge beam. The ridge cap sits on top of the beam and it is open at both ends. We figured that the wind blew the dead leaves in there via the gap between the ridge cap and the roofing sheets.
At first the noise was irritating and we would turn on the light and investigate, but we did not see anything. In the morning there might be a few leaves on the tile near the front door. One night we believe Luigi, the cat next door, caught something on the roof. There was a loud drumming noise across the roof followed by a fading “eek, eek, eek” sound. David, the house sitter for our neighbor’s Biba and Finton, said Luigi has been hunting rats around the clock. David has been finding half-eaten rats all over the place.
Last week we saw one guy peering down at us from the beam so we all gathered around to stare him down. We remarked that he actually was a kinda cute looking rat that continued to gaze at us for quite a while. Days later Angelina said something ran across her bed at night and went “eek, eek, eek”. The next night there was a battle between a couple of rats up on the beam so we turned on the light and saw one going back and forth on one of the rafters in our bedroom. At dusk rats can be seen running on the power lines. We decided to tell the property manager, Paola, and she said she would send someone out to assess the situation. Most people simply shrug when rats are mentioned.
It creeps us out a little so shrugging it off does not sit well. Nobody came out to “assess the situation” so we were left on our own with the rats. After many nights of waking up to the noise, Peter noticed that when the rats left it sounded like they were crawling on the power line that enters the home at the ridge beam. At dusk we noticed rats running all over the power lines like congested roads. They must be very agile with excellent balance because the power line entering the house looks like the power cord from a 1970’s television. It is very skinny and may not handle the capacity of the 40 amp breaker supplying the home.
Peter came up with the idea to put a cutoff 2 liter plastic bottle on the power cord to block the rats. It worked. Then we had to do the something similar to the clothes line at the rear of the house, also.
Sleeping at night was peaceful until last night when we were awakened at midnight by the odd sound of coins hitting the tile floor in the kitchen,. We checked it out and there was a rat on top of the pantry trying to figure out how to get to the food. La Rata looked well fed and bold, twitching its’ nose at us.
Peter asked himself “how do I get the rat out of the house?” All he could come up with was the container we catch bugs and spiders with. So he raises it right in front of the rat, who must have poor eyesight because he did not flinch a bit, and slams it down on top of it. Neither of us could believe we caught a rat that almost filled up the container.
Check out this picture: the rat is in the bucket!
UPDTADE
After a month’s reprieve of being awakened at night by the rats, they returned finding some other avenue into the house. Rat traps are not available here. The method of removal is poison which we are not too hip on. The rainy season was knocking on the door also and the new roof material had not been painted yet so we decided to stop by the property manager’s office and implore Paola to have the sealer sent from Loja with the idea of having a local worker do the work. Paola called the owner in Loja and passed on our request then came out the next day with a worker who assessed all of the repairs that were needed. They said one or two workers could do all the painting and close up all the gaps at the top of the walls in one day. That sounded impossible, but we didn’t care if it took a week as long as it got done.
The worker came out the following Monday and was able to paint one half of the entire roof with one coat. The following day he came with a helper and they were able to complete the painting of the roof with two coats. Wednesday they came out with big bags of concrete (110 pounds each carried by one guy alone) and started filling the gaps at the top of the walls. By Thursday quitting time it looked to be almost complete with one short day’s worth of work left and the worker said “hasta manana” as he left, but like the “Bar-D-Wranglers” song “South of the Border” he probably had other plans for Friday.
Friday came and went and the worker was a no-show. Saturday morning a rat woke us up burrowing in the leaves trapped on top of the ridge beam. After a few nights of this we went back to VREC and learned from Paola that the worker left on vacation until the beginning of next month and was contracted to do the work so no one else could be hired. We were ok with that and went home.
After coming up with some ideas about how the rat was getting into the house we went ahead and plugged up the biggest gaps with old socks and plastic bags stuffed with paper. Peter set about cleaning out the leaves on top of the ridge beam using the sketchy ladder so conveniently left behind by the guy on vacation. We had a few nights of restful sleep only to discover evidence of a rat getting into the bread. This was the first time any of the visiting rats got into our food. The next night Peter awoke to the sound of rummaging around in the kitchen and discovered a small rat on the counter. He was able to trap him behind a pan momentarily, but he squirmed out and shot past Christelle’s foot and disappeared into the darkness. Maybe being squeezed scared him off for a few nights, but he came back and again in the wee hours Peter busted him in the doorless pantry with a chunk of bread. This guy is a real climber. He dropped the bread like a hot potato and zipped on up an electrical wire and disappeared again. He was very aware and not at all like the retarded rat that let Peter lift a plastic container right in front of his face and slam it down over him months ago.
So the last couple of nights Peter awoke to loud noises coming from the kitchen, but was unable to find anything amiss. Last night Peter fabricated his own trap with some bread and cheese in it as bait and got up all excited at 4am only to find an empty trap. He determined that it was something falling on the roof so he immediately climbed up there to investigate. It was food. We have a “guaba” tree in the front yard and Louis noticed recently that those green pods with the white fuzzy seed coatings inside were growing, but we had not paid close attention to it. We buy the guaba fruit occasionally at the Sunday market for 20-25 cents and now we see a few hundred getting ripe right in front of our house. Free food that falls in the yard does have a special taste.
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