Wildlife Refuge
This is seriously getting ridiculous. For some reason little animals like our yard, deck and house. Some bloggers out there find it amusing when little animals come visit their home and quietly depart. I wouldn’t mind, if the animals that come to our property would in fact depart without eating the veggies from our garden, eating our trees to death, scaring the bugeebers out of me, or pecking out the wood from out siding!
In our almost 6 year living in this wildlife refuge we’ve seen:
- squirrels, of course
- an owl
- a swarm of honey bees (no offense dear Roses)
- wasps
- bag worms
- these red hornet looking things
- a raccoon
- a woodpecker
- a couple of snakes
- a rat (I hate rats–they are SO not in my job description)
But the line has been crossed…either a squirrel or a rat is in our house between the upstairs and downstairs. We can hear the pitter patter of its little feet running across our bedroom ceiling. And of course my beloved husband decided to point this out to me around 3 a.m. this morning.
Worst case scenario, that animal dies in our walls…oh that would be so so bad.
I’m seriously considering doing something about that St. Francis statue outside!
If you have any SERIOUS suggestions of what to do, please comment.
If it is a rat, which is probably is, then figure out where he/she is getting in. It is usually through your AC pipes that go into your attic or via a dryer vent or maybe even through your air vents in the attic. Or maybe the workers let them in when working on your siding. You just never know, but make sure you check the whole house and seal it off. You can use that expandable foam spray and/or duct tape to trap them inside.
On any wind turbines, use chicken wire with staples.
Once the house is sealed, then get some rat traps (mouse traps are much smaller than rat traps), get some good fresh cheese and mix it with a cotton ball, then apply the cotton ball/cheese meal to multiple rat traps.
Stick these rat traps in your attic. If you see the rat trails in your insulation, then stick the traps next to that. But don’t worry too much about this, they will find the food. After a few days of being trapped in your house, they will find the only source of food (your traps) and will go for it. So check the traps daily to make sure you get our the dead critters.
We had rats a few years ago, and they can cause damage to PVC water pipes (like you woudl have for your AC drain) as well as mess with your insulation and keep you up at night, so get rid of them quickly.
I killed about 7 of them, buy some work gloves for the job of clean up and make sure you have some bags for the carcasses or dig some graves in the backyard :^).
Happy hunting.
I hear ya Sharon! I blame Texas. We’ve been here 2.5 months and we have ant hills galore, geckos running around in our house, slug shells all over our sidewalks, a rattlesnake on base where Misty was patroling at 1:30 in the am, Obama campaigners, a huge recluse spider was in our garage today, and while Misty was using the restroom a couple of hours ago a little brown spider spun it’s web straight down by her shoulder! I’ve grown accustomed to the screams.
Oh, and I forgot. We had a hornets nest right outside our welcoming door. One little shot of hornet spray from the wal-mart works wonders.
Dear sister,
That is why I have cats and a dog… I have no problems with most of those critters. The cats kill the crawlers and Ginger scares everything away outside.
Love ya!
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@Di
The $3 rat trap was a lot cheaper.
[...] critter was indeed a rat, yet a small one at that… no Di, I will not going to get a cat… in a [...]