11/17/10

Squirrel Update

I'm sure you are dying to know what became of our little squirrel issue mentioned here.  Well, after my husband finally realized that I wasn't very comfortable with a critter running around in our residence and I threatened to spend any amount of money necessary to remove it...he up and got the job done.  He set up one of those friendly live traps to capture our guest.  He put sunflower seeds and peanut butter in the cage door to lure the critter into the cage.  It took a couple of tries and half a bag of sunflower seeds (he didn't like the peanut butter) before he was caught.  But low and behold it wasn't a furry little squirrel like we first expected.  Instead it was a friggin' field rat!

This is not an actual picture of our visitor but it is pretty darn close to how he actually looked.  Our friend was a little more brown than gray and I swear he was a lot bigger.  Terrance is not a photographer by any means so the pictures he took did not capture the rat's true essence!

Anyway, the morning after his/her capture we smell an awful decaying smell in our hall closet.  There are no words to describe how nauseating the smell was.  It originally was just in the closet but after two days it permeated down the hall and into the dining room and up the stairs.  I was fit to be tied (I'm not really sure what that expression means but it seems very appropriate)!  I could not stand to be in the house.  My boys were fanning their noses and we had all of the windows open, fans blowing and scentsy warmers going and we still smelled the stench of decaying carcases.

My loving husband figured that the stench would dissipate and that there was nothing an exterminator could do to help and tearing up the walls on a search and rescue mission was out of the question (of course he's not at home all day sniffing rat remains).  So after I put him in time out complained about the stench for 48hrs he saved the day by tearing out the dry wall to remove the carcass.  Turns out it was not just one carcass but a whole family of carcasses.  Five to be exact.  Five dead rat babies stinking up my house.  I guess mommy rat was trying to keep them warm and they somehow fell into the wall and she couldn't save them.  Disgusting and sad all at the same time. 

 Here's a picture of rat babies except instead of two, we had 5!

Well, the good news is that Terrance is out of time out saved the day and it's back to business as usual here.  Hopefully the lingering smell will fade completely over the next day or so although I will forever be traumatized!




2 comments:

  1. So glad you got rid of it all! Sad for the rats, happy for you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. EWWWWW. Having a squirrel in your attic seems so much more tolerable somehow...

    ReplyDelete

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