They've moved back in already and it's only mid-September...tramping about in the roof space with their hob-nailed boots on...
Himself gets a bit irate actually...he uses one of my walking sticks to prod the ceiling while I squeak because the ceiling might fall down if it's prodded too hard...then there's a deathly silence... before we hear the dear little souls scampering away...
It wasn't until I thought about it sensibly, that what I've always referred to as mouses are not mouses at all...I mean, you wouldn't hear little mouses running about now would you...they make a quick dash across the kitchen floor and one ate a pair of brand new pyjamas...but we don't hear them on the kitchen floor...just catch a glimpse out of the corner of an eye...didn't hear one eating the brand new pyjamas either...
Because you see the rodents in the hob-nailed boots who stamp about and gnaw things they ought not to gnaw are rats.
I wrote that really quickly so you might have missed it...
Germy rats who are said to carry every disease known to man which I daresay is a terrible exaggeration...great grey creatures with nasty hairless tails and long yellow teeth...
Don't mind sharing our cottage with dithery little Wood Lice who go round in circles becoming more and more bewildered...quite like the Silver Fish, who aren't fish, but an insect who eats wallpaper paste, so ours must be awful hungry seeing as we don't have any wallpaper...Himself had one living in the screen of his laptop for ages, before it finally expired...
Think the brain dead Crane Flies are a pain but Molly and Murphy eat them...long dangly legs hanging out of the sides of their mouths...they will blunder about so...crashing into the lights and falling on the floor where they try to rearrange their legs to become airborne again...foiled by a kitten with sharp eyes and teeth...
The moths are alright in small doses...they are mostly small and pretty enough, but have to confess to not much caring for the really big furry ones with eyes that sort of glow in the dark...
I have to admit a certain fondness for the mouses...I like their dainty paws and their whiskers...especially like their bright eyes...but I'm not allowed to like them for long...Himself sets traps baited with bits of chocolate and puts them everywhere and then I hear them going off in the night...the traps I mean... as they snap the poor little mouses and kill them stone dead... their mouths full of milk chocolate...
But I can't be doing with rats.
Himself goes into the roof space armed with a tub of deadly poison and a couple of big stout traps and Molly and Murphy gaze upward, their eyes like saucers.
They are only little...even a big rat is smaller than we are...lol
Every autumn in my last house I used to fight the battle of the mouses. They used to come in from the fields as soon as harvesting began, up the walls, play football in the pitched ceiling of my bedroom and emerge into the storage space over my bathroom to chew on my stored uni work. So out with the traps. Not as simple as it seems. I would hear it go off in the night and a sturdy male friend would have to be called in to remove the corpses. One night the mouse was banging around in the trap and fell down off the storage space. It proceeded to bang around my bedroom until it succumbed. I was frozen in horror. One morning I was eating my breakfast, looked up to see a nice fat rat performing acrobatics on my birdfeeder. That was it! In came a young man I know who is a much better shot than me. He shot it from the laundry room window. I didn't know rats could jump 8 feet in the air!
I am now in my nice little bungalow fooling myself that they are not in the loft. Ha ha.
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Love the image conjured up by the rat on the birdfeeder being blasted heavenwards...poor innocent creature...lol
Hi I had them in my loft for a while until my neighbour put traps down and blocked up the hole where they were going into his flat. They never came into mine because of my cat. They shouldn't come into yours either now you have got cats vashti so dont worry about that please. They will also catch any mice.... x
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So why are there battalions of them up there every evening dear heart....with the kitties gazing hopefully at the ceiling...
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They won't come into the cottage is what I meant. They will stay in the loft out of harms way, but they won't come down into your living space. x
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If I saw a rat in the sitting room I'd have to be sedated for quite a long time...lol
Oh my goodness no no not rats,Mice I don't think I would mind,as they are so small and look cute,moths and Spiders NO,they get trapped in a glass and out the door into the garden,
Might it be a squirrel? I used to see one on a neighbours garage roof then one morning I watched him disappear under the eaves. Apparently he'd been visiting for a while
My daughters gets rats in her attic, the pest control man says they can find their way in through surprisingly small holes. She had the Pest control man visit her bungalow.
My daughter said it was embarrassing, when the van turned up with pictures of rats, fleas and other horrors on the side. He turned up, wearing an all in one white plastic overall, looking like a CSI person.
First priority, is to block all the entrances. Then to set traps or poison. I don't know how things work in Ireland, but in the UK, the council will send out a Pest Control man. One of her air vents is where the rats get in. They somehow manage to move it aside.
Trouble is they came back in Spring. I wonder if they come in when they are small. I have no idea what they live on in the attic. She has to cut down her hedge to try and stop them climbing up and getting in, but they still manage it.
You can get humane mouse traps, much better then hearing the snap as the trap closes on their little noses. The trouble with mice is they wee over everything and leave droppings everywhere. The humane mouse traps can catch several mice at a time.
They can then be released a few miles away. I wouldn't fancy your kittens chances with a rat, they are nasty vicious things. They transmit Leptospirosis and Weills diseases.
Horrid things, especially the black ones.
Here are some ideas, As Tesco is not far from you I thought they might be of interest.
I would be terrified. When we were children my grandparents had a thatched cottage and at night you could hear the rats and I was scared they would come down into the bedroom, still scared now! Xx
We had mice in our garage and then they went up to loft, they came for the bird food stored in the garage and my bird feeder at back of house, you could see them run out and pick up the seeds that had dropped on the floor.
I couldn't bear the thought of killing them in traps,my husband did some research and found an electronic device that emits a high pitch sound that small rodents hate. It can't be heard by humans and dogs. So 1 plugged in loft and 1 in garage. Thank God they have now all gone, don't even get spiders in garage.
I can't remember the name of product, but purchased it through Amazon.
The only problem is it puts me off feeding the birds because it attracts those little mice, but I love the birds coming in the garden so will make sure Fed through the winter. X
Oh no! not rats Vashti, anything but rats (not a mice fan either). I am reminded of when we stayed in a gite in France once back in the 90's and rats used to move around, hobnail boots on too, in the roof space. I couldn't wait to leave.
Silver fish I remember as a kid living in our bungalow in Ashford, Middlesex and lots of wood lice and huge, hairy house spiders...........that's it! I have now scared myself half to death so bye for now.
They don't actually worry me in the least...it's the blooming germs they carry about with them...mice pee and poo every few seconds so I've read...and that isn't nice at all!
Hi Vashti, we had lots of mice in our loft space some years ago so we bought an electric rodent repeller, it is just like a big plus and it emits soundwaves the mice don't like, we have had I for a good few years now and have never seen or heard a mouse since, they do work with rats as well.
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