Residential rodent

Sitting in the lounge one evening, lubricating my larynx with a pint of the best, some creature galloped across my knotty pine ceiling, and started gnawing at the woodwork of my roof timbers!

The Missus and I looked up at the same time, our eyes focussed in the general direction of Heaven.
“Rat!” I exclaimed, my eyeballs sticking out like church hat-pegs.

The Missus put her knitting down, “I heard something last night, but you drowned it with your snoring.”
“Then it can`t be the same one if I drowned the blessed thing.”

“No no!” She explained, “Your snoring drowned the gnawing, it`s probably the same one, it`s here in this corner.”
Now there is nothing quite so devastating than sharing your accommodation with a rat.

Apart from catching bubonic plague from the fleas it carries around, a rat is just about the most persistent creature alive when it comes to settling down, getting married and having baby ratlets, or whatever you call them!
“We must get him out, and fast.” say`s the Missus grabbing the broom handle and banging on the knotty pine with all her might.

That must have scared the creature half to death, because all was quiet until three on the following morning when the gnawing began again.

“Hear that!”

“What?” Now I am fast asleep, how I am expected to hear anything beats me.

“It`s that rat again, he`s right above here, listen!”

I listen, and there isn`t a sound for at least an hour, then I hear its little feet scampering above, trapped between the roof iron and my knotty pine ceiling. The gnawing begins.

“What the heck is it eating, if it doesn`t stop soon the whole roof will collapse!”

“They make sawdust……something soft to lay their babies in.”

That did it.

Leaping out of my warm bed, I padded off to where I thought the sound was coming from. Of course, it stopped as I began to move about. Nothing dilly about a rat, it has exceptional audio reception, even the rustle of the Lowvelder makes it go silent for days.

The Missus is beside herself by this time, if that’s at all possible.

“Come back to bed lovey, it`s only a rat!”

“I`ll poison the little perisher tomorrow!”

“Oh no you wont!”

Thinking back to our last visitation by these vermin, I remember that the last rat I exterminated, died up there in the roof timbers, making our humble abode stink like the proverbial sewer!
Next morning, I`m out under the eaves attempting to fathom out how the creature got in.
“Aha!” I exclaimed.

“Look at this Lovey, there`s a whacking great hole between the roof iron and the cemented bricks.”
Of course, without thinking, I stuff a pile of newspaper into the recess, only to find on the following morrow that our rat has pulled the whole lot out again.

“Talk about feather your nest,” say`s the Missus. “That`s just what they want to line the crib with for the babies!”

A yard of chicken netting did the trick. So I`m settling back to normality when up comes another un-nerving question.

“You don`t think you`ve sealed the little blighter in do you?”

In this life, you`ve always got two chances.

So far, I haven`t heard the patter of tiny feet from above, keeping our fingers crossed, we seem to have done the trick…that is, until next time.

After all, let`s face it, there`s nothing like a rat in the family to make life interesting.