The Farmer in the Dell and a Rat in the Rafters

If you read my last post...you know about last week's Storytime fiasco...hahah...everything went wrong that day...but somehow it all turned out all right. well, this week I was organized and ready to go. The room was set up, my craft pieces were cut out and sorted, my tape player was operating...and the puppets were ready to get on stage. haha

and it's ironic that we had a rat in the song because we have had some rat issues at our house this week. The palm trees around our house are getting pretty thick and they are a great place for rats to nest. ( The "Eraticator" we called told John they are a huge problem) Apparently one of these rats (I've seen them in the trees and on the wires...but never had one come in before!) decided to make itself at home. We had been hearing something crawling around in the ceiling (no attic really). We didn't worry too much...there are a few snakes around the same trees and I've seen a hawk from time to time...I guess I just hoped one of them would take care of any rats. Well....after a few days of hearing paws moving around, John thought he heard some squeaking...and decided that was it...we didn't want a whole gang of rats crawling around up there.
Now I know what these big rats look like...pretty gross...but I decided to think of our rat as "Templeton" from Charlotte's Web He was a rat...but kind of cute in the illustrations by E.B. White. haha
We cut a hole in the ceiling...the guy went up and checked things out...definitely a rat...wasn't sure about the babies...He showed John a big hole they/it had chewed in the pvc to get into the roof. (glad I didn't see that!) He set some traps and said he'd be back in a day or two. The first night...nothing in the traps. The second night John heard the rat walking around and then it fell down a gap in the wall and we could hear it thrashing around trying to get back up. It was GROSSSS! I kept expecting to see a tail or head or something coming out of the wall...thankfully...I did not! haha And better yet..once the thing finally made it back up... it promptly ended up in the trap. No more little paws walking around in the "rafters". $500.00 later...the holes are patched up, traps are still set and the entire house has been "rat proofed"! Next project is to have all the trees trimmed. John went to the neighbors on both sides with tales of rats in the rafters and they all thought it would be a great idea to trim them up! haha Actually the neighbors on one side had mentioned they were going to have theirs trimmed...the rat news just upgraded the project from "To be done" to "To be done ASAP!" haha