Well, I have to say this is not for the faint hearted, you have been warned!
You'll recall that Raisin, known for catching, but NOT eating, small furry creatures, brought us a gift which proceeded to hide under the bookcase in the sitting room. It then moved on to investigate the walls of the house, in particular my bedroom walls, which resulted in the great reorganisation, in panic mode in the middle of the night, of the contents of the "underbed" for want of a better word.
Further explorations were made, in which our creature found that the fruit we stored on the kitchen counter was very tasty. Little scrabblings late at night, as I was reading quietly in the sitting room, alerted me to his presence, but still no sighting bar that first glimpse of grey fur under the kitchen cabinet. Aha, thought I, we'll soon sort this; the fruit was moved to the top of the fridge. This was, of course, no bar to our athletic rodent, who simply used the cooling fins on the rear of the fridge as a ladder. Bananas and pears developed neat little hollows. The fruit being made yet more secure, great thought was given to how to capture this silly creature. Not being an advocate of poisoning, a humane mousetrap was purchased, baited with chocolate and peanut butter, and placed beside the fridge. A week or so passed. Nothing happened, but scrabblings were still heard in the middle of the night. You'll gather that by now my sense of humour was taking a bit of a battering, due to lack of sleep and general frustration. Then, one evening, hearing minute noises from the kitchen, I crept on soft feet to a point where I could see the fridge. I found Rum looking very intently at his bowl from the other side of the kitchen. And, yes, there, there (not on the chair) was that twitching whiskered thief of fruit and cat biscuits. Not a mouse, oh no, it was a rat! At this point, my sense of compassion for the natural world took a little bit of a battering. A rat in the house was just not cricket.
The following day the good man went down to our hardware store and yes, poison was purchased, along with a bigger trap in which the poison could be safely placed where cats couldn't go. The box of pretty blue blocks, carefully closed, was put to one side where, the following evening, after more scratchings in the kitchen, I realised that Mr Rat was helping himself; it was easier than going into that silly trap thing. I felt guilty, but I felt that this would soon bring an end to the whole sorry saga, which had been going on for about three weeks by now. But, no, this rat was a mighty rat. These tasty blocks of poison wouldn't defeat him. So, back to the hardware store, where the proprietor told us cheerfully that they had been selling lots of rat poison, the warm summer having been a very good one for rats! A more poisonous poison was recommended - you want the red blocks madam, not the blue ones.
So home I toiled, still feeling guilty, and placed the red blocks where no cat could come across them, but where we knew Mr Rat was scurrying. We waited, and waited, blocks disappeared and were replaced; several more weeks passed - was he feeding an army for heaven' sakes?! Eventually, the absence of scrabblings from the kitchen and night time scurrryings in my bedroom walls suggested a victory. We assumed he had fled to the great outdoors in search of water, and had presumably breathed his last. I felt dreadfully guilty, but even more relieved, and began to sleep at night again.
Roll on a year, or was it perhaps two? Our dishwasher died, and an engineer was called. As he knelt on the floor by the sink, prising the kickboard away from beneath the unit, I jokingly said that I hoped he didn't find a corpse, and briefly summarised the tale of the DBM - or rather DBR. "That won't bother me" he said cheerfully, "I grew up on a farm .... oh yes, there it is!!!" And there it was, a desiccated little scrap of "stuff". "Have you got something I can pick it up with" the engineer queried, looking slightly less insouciant. So, yes, you've guessed, out came my rubber gloves and a goodly wodge of newspaper, and I sunk to my knees on the floor and retrieved said corpse from beneath our sink, where he had quietly and, somehow odourlessly died and decomposed. I bundled him up and popped him in the bin to go out with the rubbish the very next day. So that is the tale of the DMB, who became a DBR, or perhaps simply a D%mn Bl@@dy Nuisance.
I'll spare you the tale of his cousin, brought in recently, very dead but entirely uneaten, by Rum. Fortunately confined to the conservatory by a securely closed cat flap. We have learned our lesson well!
