There is a little animal under the sitting room windowsill...inside...not outside and he or she chews away happily half the night...I sleep on the settee as you know and the settee is right under the window, so in the middle of night, when it's fairly dark and reasonably quiet, that chewing sounds quite like an enormous rat. I say reasonably dark because the very small light on top of my oxygen condenser is extremely bright when it's dark, and it's reasonably quiet because the same condenser hums happily away to itself...not that I mind actually. It's quite a soothing sort of noise.
I do hope it isn't an enormous rat with sharp teeth and its fur full of fleas that'll one night, in the not too distant future, come right through the wood and pop it's head out...all long whiskers and a twitching nose. Can't be doing with rats and their nasty hairless tails and yellowish teeth...can't abide their squeaking and quarrelling...
For reasons best forgotten about we never did replace the wooden window sills except for the one in the bathroom...there was a zoo underneath that rotten wood...hundreds of woodlice dashing about and those strange little silver fish...there were centipedes as well and millions of spiders...well...perhaps not actually millions. No evidence of mouses or rats though.
Trying to keep rodents out of old cottages is almost an impossible task...the stone walls are a haven for them. They were built with a gap between the inner and the outer wall you see...then the gap was filled with small stones and wads of horse-hair...like a rudimentary form of insulation. Some cottages even have wodges of old clothing and blankets in the space between the walls...they simply disintegrate should you come across them during any building work.
If you were to walk around the outside of our cottage, you'd find numerous tiny gaps at ground level where the old layers of lime have long worn away...I'm presuming it's through those small holes that the mouses come in...especially in the winter months when it's cold and frosty.
Visit any of the neighbours in our street and you'll see mouse traps placed alongside walls in kitchens and hallways...beside the ranges and the cookers...almost out of sight behind the 'fridge...sometimes baited with a lethal poison...others with a bit of chocolate or peanut butter...
All food is kept in plastic containers...crumbs are swept up and thrown out for the birds...but still those tell-tale tiny black droppings appear...and still we hear the quick pitter patter overhead in the evenings as they charge about in the roof space and I lie there half asleep and listen to the sound of enthusiastic gnawing under the wooden window sill.
I get woken in the morning by a tapping on our landing window, a blackbird who brings her breakfast to eat on the cill. We cannot open that window or she comes in and makes an awful mess. Regurgitated berries stain terribly!
its just the thought of viles disease eeeek! 
Old Stone Walls And Ripe Damsons...And being Lucky...
