Rat Trap Claptrap

A few months before the demolition of the rear of the house signaled the beginning of the Roediger House makeover project, an uninvited guest took up residence in my home. He first made his presence known when I woke one night to the sound of him chewing through some wrapped-up homemade cookies I was going to take with me on a flight to Maine the next morning. The cookies were in my backpack on the floor at the foot of my bed. In my bedroom.



The theory is that there was a great scattering of rats into the Holly Avenue and West Salem neighborhoods when the downtown baseball park project got started. The land that the new stadium is being built on was already in a marvelous bowl shape, but it was also an area with a lot of run-down and abandoned properties. In other words, it was a true rat haven. And once the structures down there started getting demolished and the clearing and grading of the land commenced, well, those rats had to go somewheres.



I'm not sure what you know about city rats, or how they differ from mice. Mice are easy. It's why there's no need to "build a better mousetrap." The design that's been around forever works elegantly because mice are naturally curious little creatures and don't stray much from a localized area, which they constantly roam and investigate and nose around in. New things drive them nuts with wondering and they'll get all up into them, which leads quickly to their demise when that new thing is a simple spring-loaded mousetrap.

Rats are sly, smart, cautious buggers. I learned with the first one to invade the house back in 2008 that they can actually feast on the peanut butter or granola bars on the rat trap without ever setting it off. I even wrapped a chunk of peanut-y granola in Saran Wrap so that he'd have to dig around in it to dislodge it...and he still got away with the morsels without springing the trap. I finally went with poison although I hated losing the opportunity to see with my own eyes that he had been defeated. Then the demolition came at about that same time, and that first invader was heard or seen no more.


Ah, but then came the harsh cold of this current winter, and I have a new visitor. The first notice I took of him was hearing scratching in the ceiling directly above my bedroom. He may have gotten into the house the same way the squirrel invader did about a year ago, through a gable vent at the end of the porch. Or not. Who knows? [If you click on that post, you'll see mention of a screen that Peter LaRoque of LaRoque Construction of Mocksville was going to put over that vent, but he never did.] So far, I can't see what he's going after for food, and I've got no signs of him except what I'm hearing in the ceiling. Oh, I wish it were just a squirrel, but I don't think I'm going to be so lucky.

Especially since he's already started eating peanut butter off the rat trap. Without springing it.

It's going to be time to call in my pest control folks. Can't keep having sleep interrupted.