Trials and Tribulations of a Second Invasion of Rats or The Tale of Three Keiths

A telephone call from Keith (neighbor) reached me in Wisconsin when I was visiting my daughter and her family.  You may remember that I was there with Daughter #1 for the high school graduation of my eldest granddaughter and to help Daughter #3 during her knee replacement surgery.  I loved being able to cook for a small crowd and help where ever I could.  However, Keith said he had just observed a rat leaving my yard, crossing the street, to where his wife Rita’s truck was sitting.

Rats, again!  I called Keith (exterminator) to start the eradication process.  Keith (neighbor) would unlock the yard gate so the rat poison could be placed in the dog run with the wood.  There were no dogs to be in the dog run at that time, so placement didn’t have to be as careful as if we had dogs that were going to be in the area.  When I arrived home, neither my dog nor any visiting dog was allowed to enter the dog run because of the efforts to get rid of the rats.  Their outdoor activities were confined to the big part of the back yard.

Keith (handyman) and Miles set about eliminating any unintentional invitation to rats to make their home in the wood yard / dog run. And, what a job that was! It meant moving every piece of wood and restacking it in another part of the wood yard, moving every wood palette, breaking up the ground support that had been used for the wood to rest on before it was to be taken into the house for burning in the wood stove.  It was under the stacked wood, lying on the ground supports where the rats (and the resident mice) lived.  It was great protection from the weather for them.

They cut down the dead peach tree that I had said could not be removed because it was that peach tree that allowed me to get up from the ground when I passed out there about three months ago.  I had to concede that the tree had to go – it was in the way.  And, of course, I don’t plan to pass out in the wood yard, ever again!  The yard had a slight slope, and they leveled that so they could install pavers.  The yard will still be a wood yard (as well as the dog run), but there will be metal wood racks sitting on the pavers with the wood stacked in the racks.  After leveling the land and installing the pavers, they laid down 3/4 inch red gravel on top of the weed deterrent cloth – all over the yard.  Except where the pavers and sidewalk are.

During all of the work that was done, no rats, and no mice, were seen.  Keith (exterminator) came to check on the boxes of rat poison.  He said that it didn’t look as though the packets had been disturbed -which means, he says, that there is no feeding activity on them.  Because Keith (handyman) and Miles have so disturbed the location of their habitat, it is likely that the rats have relocated (and, I fear they are relocating to my neighbors’ yards).  Keith (neighbor) has now had many rats in his yard, under his shed.  He has been using a killing rat trap to remove them and, to date, nine rats are no longer with us.  Trevor has live-trapped two rats in his yard; neither lived through the night, and neighbor Michael has taken care of two more.

Miles and Keith (HM) decided to do the same thing to the wood yard on the east side of the house that they did on the west side wood yard / dog run (they did, after all, have 7 1/2 tons of gravel to use).  I have two wood stoves; one in the living room that is my primary source of heat in the winter, and one in the “Big Room” that I only use when I’m going to work in that room for a period of time, longer than the time it takes to check my e-mail.  So, the west wood yard is for the front room stove, and the east wood yard is for the smaller stove in the Big Room.  It, too, took a lot of work; clearing the weeds, taking out what was left of the stump of the tree from heaven (we called it the tree from hell) that was cut down when the Big Room was built, laying down the cloth, and the rest of the red gravel.

Keith (HM) and Miles moved that 7 1/2 tons of that red gravel from my driveway, where it was dumped by the supplier, to its new location in the wood yards.  In the beginning, they shoveled the gravel from the pile into wheelbarrows, wheeled the load to the proper location, and dumped it on the ground.  Then, they smoothed the gravel around the specified area.

Handyman Keith’s friend, Todd (that makes three Todds), has a small John Deere tractor with a front-end loader on it.  He brought it to my house, creeping along streets where, truth be told, he probably should not have been driving a vehicle without a license.  That front end loader saved a lot of back breaking work.  Keith (HM) and Miles would place the two wheelbarrows together, Todd would pick up a load of gravel and dump it into the two wheelbarrows, and off they would go to dump the gravel in the chosen spots.

Neighbor Trevor has restored his grandfather’s old, full-sized John Deere.  Knowing that he appreciates this kind of machinery, I called him to come and watch the operation using the smaller tractor.  It wasn’t long before he grabbed a shovel and helped with moving the gravel.  This is what people in our neighborhood do – they help each other.  With four men, shovels, wheelbarrows, and the John Deere Tractor, it wasn’t long before all of the gravel had been moved from the driveway to the wood yards where it would become a permanent fixture.  And, because of them and one man with rat poison in boxes, I don’t expect I’ll be dealing with rats very soon.

Probably, my only regret is that I won’t be able to feed the birds.  Left over and dropped bird seed is also an attractant to vermin, and I won’t undermine the hard work done by the men to eradicate the rats and mice.  When weather cools, we’ll be able to get the rest of the wood palettes cut and stacked in the wood racks for winter.  What they have done will make my job of bringing in the wood and taking out the ashes much easier than before.

Thanks so much to Keith and Keith and Keith and Miles and Todd and Trevor!

Be safe and well.

The Cranky Crone

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