Living on the greenbelt has it's perks. No humans live behind us, we have privacy, and our urban back yard seems a lot bigger than it actually is. That's the good news. The bad news... vermin.
We discovered the day after Thanksgiving that the walls in our basement storage closet were wet. Thankfully none of the boxes of holiday ornaments nor the wedding dress storage box were impacted but it set off a journey involving emergency plumbers, water removal specialists, emergency plumbers, appointments with pest control people and third emergency plumber visit.
We are extremely disgusted and horrified by the idea of "friends" in the crawl space and now, almost a month later feel like we might be on the winning side of this eviction. That's not the right word for what is happening in the down under - it's murder, but the idea of living together peacefully ends when the hobos eat the plumbing lines.
We found two newly departed mice in the basement bathroom early in the week and as we can't burn down the house had to remove their little bodies. Congratulating ourselves on our bravery, and acknowledging that there are parts of this process that one or the other of us do better than the other, but that we need each other, we felt superior. Well, you know that is the moment at which karma slaps you in the face. A third little fury mouse found its way upstairs into MY OFFICE.
I saw something out of the corner of my eye and I talked myself out of thinking what I was worried about, so the "friend" got braver and scurried across the floor in plain sight. It was "just" a mouse, but still. SO GROSS.
What is a girl to do? Trap that little bastard in the room, set up glue traps and remove as much stuff from the floor as possible. Again, I'd burn the room down to the studs if I could contain it, but that isn't possible and our insurance company has already said that this whole event isn't covered. "Vermin exclusion, sorry. No judgement."
I'm the judgement. Per the pest people, who must be very tired of telling people that they aren't gross, the warmth of our crawl space is too much of a draw and the small framing error and water cleanout that wasn't meshed in was enough for the little family of rats to ignore. So, we have rats AND mice. Great.
My new office mate did not survive the night and has moved on to the Waste Management dump in the sky, or Skyway - where ever that stuff goes when it leaves the bins. We haven't heard anything in the walls in two days.
The pest man just pulled into the driveway for the disgusting job of going under the house, clearing and resetting all the traps. There's no hiding it from the neighbors... his truck is emblazoned with GotaRat.com in HUGE bright red letters.
Let's hope that by Christmas eve, not a creature will be stirring.
