It started while cleaning up after Friday’s supper. Washing dishes isn’t exactly a quiet job, but I thought I kept hearing odd clicks and thumps. After a few minutes and a few more clicks and thumps I realized it was coming from my oven range hood.
That’s weird. We have a center kitchen home. The kitchen is about fourteen foot square with four load bearing walls surrounding it. The rooms around the kitchen have doors in both directions that form a hallway of sorts with a box “hall” on one side leading to a craft room and a bedroom. But for all the glass, the kitchen would be the safest in case of a hurricane. Noises from load bearing walls are worrisome. I looked under the hood. Nothing strange. Just a dusty light bulb that I should clean: which I did. I went back to loading the dishwasher. No more clicks. No more thumps. I closed the dishwasher set it up to run switched off the lights and …….. Thump! Followed by a scritch, scritch, scritch.
It couldn’t be a rat. No way!
Mr. Wolverton and Chibi stopped in the kitchen to give a listen. Silence.
Of course.
We go to leave the kitchen, me thinking I’m hearing things. Then, it happened. CLICK! Scritch and a Thump! for good measure. Some creature had gotten into the oven range vent. Unlike most oven range vents, ours is a 3.5” pipe that flows up through the roof with it’s own little vent roof on the top center of the roof. The vent at the base broadens to about 8 inches as it joins the oven hood at a 90 degree angle. There is a tiny 2x6 inch ledge. The only reason whatever it was, wasn’t in the house was a fan and a 8 inch square piece of mesh over my range top that somehow, was holding it in. Gross! That sucker had to pry open the tiny vent roof from roof above and had fallen about 15 feet onto the ledge. The scritches were from it moving around. Thumps likely from it falling again and again from failing to scale up the inside of the pipe to the roof. The clicks probably from it attacking the fan inside the hood housing. Damn!
I grew up in farm country. Rats happen. They are everywhere, but I really don’t want them in the house. How it got there was going to have to wait for daylight, meanwhile….. plans need to be made. Everybody gets leather gloves. We clear the kitchen counter surrounding the range of glass. The best plan is to get it to fall into an old (springy) nylon mesh laundry basket baited with peanut butter on a paper plate in the bottom of the basket. The fall back plan, should it escape the basket is to get it to run out the front door, (it was closer and a clearer path with only one 90 degree turn as opposed to a circuitous 180 degree turn to get out the back door). We put together a make shift rat maze to the front door. We remove the mesh cover and fan, then wedge the laundry basket so it’s top sealed around the vent hole. I got the old straw broom to scoot it out of the house should I need it to persuade the creature along the planned path. And…… nothing.
More, nothing.
Some minutes later, still nothing.
Ratatouille was either suspicious of the peanut butter, nose deaf or taking a nap. Rats!
Mr. Wolverton went into his office to put his reading glasses away as he was afraid they would break in scooting the rat out of the house, where upon he got distracted by something or another and failed to come back.
Meanwhile, I turned down the lights near the range thinking Mr. Wolverton would be back, soon.
Scritch!
Ahah! Qualified success.
My daughter gestured for me to take my place armed with the nearly worn out straw broom to protect the hallway to the bedrooms and craft room. With the doors to those rooms, closed; It would be a circus if it got down that dead end.
More waiting.
It seems the rat was unsure of the peanut butter. My daughter was giving me whispered updates. It looks like the rat was afraid of the two foot drop to the prized peanut butter.
Still no Mr. Wolverton. We couldn’t abort the plan now as the creature was peering down into the basket.
Mr. Wolverton was still distracted by whatever and still absent.
The rat was in the bag, um, er, mesh basket.
My daughter informed me at the beginning of the plan that due to her better reflexes, she would handle the basket and due to my better batting average; I would be wielding the broom. Her job was to snap the laundry basket shut Mr. Wolverton was to take the basket from her by the top and scoot through the front door and let the basket snap open in the front lawn. That was the plan. Mr. Wolverton was still distracted in his office.
“Daddy!” Chibi whispered. The whisper barely carried through the kitchen pass through to the family room. We were on our own.
Chibi grabbed the laundry basket and snapped the top rim shut, but before she could scoot to the door about 20 feet away; the rat hit bottom and rebounded to the top and out. So much for the best plan.
Predictably, we both squealed, cursed and sprang into action. The rat bounced off the oven hood onto the counter where it got a running start and then sprang for the floor. It needed no encouragement to avoid my daughter holding the baited basket. Ron Chin Chihuahua was barking his encouragment or frustration (I’m not sure which) while racing between the top of the living room sofa to a dining room chair in order to get a better view of the action. Ratatouille was headed toward me. I got him cornered between the base boards at the closed bathroom door. I was tapping the base board trying to get it to go toward the front door. Mr. Wolverton was then distracted, this time by us and appeared by the back door.
My daughter shouted, “Open the door!”
Mr. Wolverton was confused. He saw the ruckus and said, “The back door?”
In unison we both hollered, “No! The front!”
He had to go the long way around to the front door, “That wasn’t the plan!”
Which earned him a combined, “No shit!”, “Don’t care!” and another “Open the front door!”
Meanwhile the rat had ideas of his own. He feinted toward the craft room and I aimed my broom like a hockey stick hoping to scoot the rat like a hockey puck out the front door; but in reality I hit him like a golf club and he got more air than Simone Biles on the vault. Worse, my aim was not true. Instead of heading toward the front door, the rat was airborne headed straight toward my daughter armed only with a laundry basket. She missed catching it in the basket. It landed on her foot which made her jump and karate kick at the same time (a vision to be sure)…..sending the rat sailing over our geriatric dog who was obliviously sleeping in her dog bed, into the door frame bordering the dining room and family room. Definitely, not the plan. Fatefully, it bounced into the family room more than half way to the back door. Ron Chin Chihuahua gave his resounding approval safely jumping up and down on the dining room chair.
The rat, I assume stunned, skittered to the relative shelter of under the fuzeball table. My daughter and I had the rat between us and the back door. So much for plan B.
“Daddy! Open the back door!”
That earned us a, “Seriously!” and a “Make up your mind!”.
He had to go the long way again around to the back door. He grabbed the 6 gallon water jugs we had set up for the track to the front door. Mr. Wolverton made his way to the back door and reset the track for the back door and opened the back door. He looked up at us on the other side of the room, “What am I going to use to bait the back door?” A quick discussion of how many ways peanut butter, paper plate frisbee flying across the house could go wrong (in consideration of what had gone right so far) decided that point rather quickly. The relative safety of the outdoors was going to have to be bait enough.
Then, Mr. Wolverton went the long way again, around the house to get back to us. He decided it was time for me to surrender my hockey stick/golf club/straw broom. I was chill with that only to turn around and have my daughter had me another broom — the broad one used to push water off the deck. My job was to push the rat down the track out the door while Mr. Wolverton scootched the rat from under the fuzeball table. At that point, I figured we be at this for a while longer since all our plans had gone so well.
Just as I had resigned myself to chasing a rat through the house for most of the night, the rat scampered toward the back door less than fifteen feet away. Gulp, Mr. Wolverton’s office door was open….would the rat go outside or into the office? Lucky for us the rat heeded the call to the great outdoors and ran out the back door. Unplanned C was the winner. Ron Chin Chihuahua ran up behind me giving the rat his full approval for leaving.
A couple buckets of soapy bleach water later, I was ready for bed. My kitchen has never been more clean.
I don’t care what anyone says, if you live in Florida, there are rats in the environment. We had a neighbor who had iguanas for pets. They moved away, but the rats that come with iguanas, stayed. We have a church that has an open field less than half a block away that I know has rat holes in it as Ron Chin Chihuahua is fascinated by them when we walk near them. Somewhere in the neighborhood is a raccoon den as we have seen a raccoon or two at night dashing across the street just last Christmas.
Thankfully, this is the first rat I’ve seen on our property in probably ten years. We live near a canal a couple blocks away. our city is a wild bird preserve. We have Federally mandated wet lands less than mile away in two directions and a nature walk less than a mile away in another (may they all remain through our current administration). All this means is that there are rats. We deal with it. We carefully observe rat-free composting techniques and make wet garbage unappetizing to vermin. We keep our pool chlorine tablets in our shed, deterring rats from making the shed a home. Our City gave us a thick walled, 96 gallon trash bin. Because we live in a hurricane zone, our trees are trimmed so that nothing touches or overhangs the house. Shrubs are trimmed at the base to discourage rats from making a den in the lower branches. The only jelly points are the lines from the telephone/electric pole to the house, which is why every opening into the roof has steel mesh sealing it off from creature intrusion. We check the soffit boards, vents and fascia boards every few months and fix them as needed. This plan has worked for the 25 years we’ve lived in this house.
Something went wrong, but we weren’t going to look for it in the night. Yesterday, we spent an hour looking for a hole a rat could exploit. All vents, fascia and soffit were secure. The oven range vent, however had a problem. The tiny rooflet was secure, but the mesh under it was pushed up on one side — a hole less than 2x3 inches. Hard to believe the rat we chased through the house (that seemed huge Friday night) got through a hole so small. Twenty minutes later the mesh was screwed on with washers. We were gathering the tools and got ready to go down the ladder when Mr. Wolverton commented “We haven’t had this much fun since we found the tree frog in the toilet.” I stopped turned and looked at one meshless toilet vent while Mr. Wolverton must have been looking at the other. A couple more pieces of mesh and a few more screws, washers and nuts later, we were ready to climb off the roof.
Nope, don’t want to have that happen again.