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In getting rid of unwelcome visitors, we gain a new friend

By KATHERINE SNOW SMITH
Published July 13, 2006

They came in mid March and are still here in the heat of July's heat.

We first knew of their presence when we found holes chewed in a bag of potting soil kept in the closet under the stairs.

I had no idea then what was to come.

Traps set under the stairs and in the attic soon apprehended three mice and two rats. We then set out to seal or cover every hole, crevice and vent from the foundation to the roof.

Fortunately our annual contract with Terminex, which until now was only to combat insects, means that a pest control expert will make unlimited visits to our house.

Jay, who will probably appear in our family Christmas card picture this year, made regular visits to set and empty traps, advise me on still more small holes to patch and other tactics for cornering the rodents.

My neighbor Caroline McCoy also offered great support. She had discovered she had a rat problem months earlier when she asked which one of her three kids had chewed into an avocado and mushed it all over the kitchen counter. Unfortunately, the children hadn't gone near the avocado.

In our neighborhood of older homes, alley trash cans and fruit trees, rats come with the territory, it seems. Caroline assured me if we closed up all our holes and set the traps, we'd close in on them just as she had.

After a week or so with empty traps, we hoped we'd caught all of rodents.

Then the scratching began.

Creatures trapped within the walls after we sealed all the holes were looking for a way out. Or was it a way in?

One morning I was showing my husband a spot in the kitchen wall where the drywall was breaking apart, and suddenly we found ourselves looking right at a claw. And then a nose.

Jay arrived within an hour of my panicked call. He told us to set a trap in the kitchen to catch this creature when he made his big break through the wall. Since we have a dog and three kids, he suggested a glue trap. It's about the size of a shoe box lid and is filled with sticky, sticky glue.

The next morning I crept down the steps partly dreading, but mostly hoping, to see our captive creature. To my horror, not only was there no rodent, there was no trap. Somehow he had gotten only partially stuck and managed to drag the trap away.

We searched the house but found nothing.

I called Jay, whose number was now programmed into my cell phone, later that day on my way home from work and he met me at home.

He found the glue trap empty and turned on its side under our family room sofa. A book case backs up to the sofa so we had not seen it at first. Jay went on to find a big hole chewed in the back of our sofa.

He surmised that the creature had managed to hobble over to the sofa, then pulled itself off the glue trap by grabbing on the sofa with its teeth.

He told me that the rat was most definitely still in our living space and was probably pretty freaked out by the whole experience.

So was I.

Tread lightly and keep my 3-year-old son close at hand, he advised.

My son and I went straight to Home Depot for poison tablets to stick into the growing hole in the kitchen wall. I ran into a friend and told her of our waging battle.

"I feel sorry for the rats," she said, commenting on my determination to win the war.

Her words echoed in my mind on the way home. She was right. Why should I let them intimidate me? After all, am I not the one who walks upright?

My newfound confidence vanished on the first night of June. I was awakened around midnight to the sound of claws scratching across our bedroom carpet.

They had made it upstairs. They were winning.

Meanwhile, our Internet service went out and after countless hours on the phone with Verizon a technician came to the house. He kept asking me if we had had any construction or electrical work done recently.

I assured him no, then thought of the rats who had been running rampant behind the walls. I decided to keep quiet about that little situation fearing that his work might not be covered under our warranty if the problem was due to rats.

Just as the Verizon tech was finishing, Jay from Terminex showed up for a trap check. I quickly and apologetically asked him to drive around the block until he saw the Verizon truck leave.

While Desperate Housewives characters get to shoo lovers and ex-husbands out the door to keep them from crossing paths, I'm stuck with overlapping technicians who who I fear will discover my rats.

We regained Internet access about the time the water dispenser in our new refrigerator broke because the rats chewed through that line. They just kept coming.

Perhaps the problem now was the holes in the wall behind the icemaker in our wet bar or the cracks under the bathroom cabinets. My husband is not handy and couldn't begin to rebuild them, so I started calling (okay, stalking) two different handymen recommended by friends. They never called back.

The wonderful friend and craftsman I usually use for building bookshelves or wiring lights was in his native France for six weeks. I called his cell phone, hoping the recording would say when he would be back.

He answered. He was just off the plane and back in town. I had never been so happy to hear anyone's voice. I had to hold back the tears as I explained the dismal situation to him. He was over first thing the next morning and spent the day rebuilding walls, floors and cabinetry.

That weekend we caught two rats. And a stench started to come from behind the kitchen wall. It was the sickest, sweetest smell I could hope for. It meant they were dying back there.

Jay stopped by again the other day and my husband noted the way our usually contentious bassett hound wagged his tail to welcome Jay as the children gave him a familiar wave. He has become one of the family, one of the team. He says the heat should make the smell pretty horrible, but also pretty quick.

Then the maggots will come and the flies will follow.

Bring it on.

Katherine Snow Smith's Rookie Mom column runs regularly in the south Pinellas regional editions of the Times.

[Last modified July 13, 2006, 00:05:32]