I won’t lie: this is going to be one cranky post.
March is in my opinion undoubtedly the best month to enjoy Melbourne. Summer’s rage has almost all but passed and we enjoy lovely climes until Winter’s touch comes again mid-April. However, as I’ve mentioned in passing already recently, it also signals one other thing: possum mating season.
And, worse, with the possums come….the rats.
Those of my friends who are familiar with my adventures with these two particular creatures will be well aware how much I despise both, because year after year, despite frantic plugging, each find their way into our roof to make a cozy little den for themselves. Anyone familiar with the scratching and the high pitched squeals you get with said company will fully understand me when I say that at that time I wished I owned a shotgun. I would’ve used it.
Now, they’re back again.
Forget for a moment I have NO IDEA how they’ve gotten in. Forget for a moment that we’ve got enough baits remaining up there for New York City. Forget that that ball of anxiety I’ve only recently been able to dislodge from my belly is back again and it’s so tired. Just remember that while I’m listening to rodent frolicking is the time I should be sleeping when I don’t get much of that anyway.
I love where we live. I love our house. But it’s times like these when I just…despair. Poor Adam too, he’s the one who lugs himself up into the roof to assess the damage each time….
*sigh*
…but I really don’t know what to do anymore.
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So you’re saying you’re operating a brothel for rodents?
And I’ve always thought Australia sounded so romantic.
We just don’t get rats here. Or snakes. Or poisonous spiders. Or lizards or big bugs. One of the benefits of living in a place that’s this cold.
HA HA, yor reminded me of my Gran with your damning possum story. She had this obsessive paranoia abot the “effing possums”. It was really quite comincal to ehar her go on about them. We never got then where we were in Australia.
We get enough rats here though – it is not quite as cold in BC as it is in Alaska – no snakes though – thank God.
lol MiscMum. I know it is not funny from where you are – I think the season may be a bit different down there – perhaps they migrate?
We didn’t have them in the ceiling, but in my previous house, we were the only flat roof amongst many gabled Queenslanders (part of the amazing way the Russian owner renovated during the 1970′s) and I swear, the possums, when fronting up to one another would decide to “take it to the roof of No 41!” because all fights took place on our flat, spacious, noisy roof.
Check trees around the house – the rats have to have a highway. Once my ex finally got rid of the lovely overhang that the neighbour’s Dutch Elm tree had to our roof, the kill rate went way down (the record was 27 in the same trap – not simultaneously – in one day).
Such an awful feeling with little ones, though – lots of hugs!
Thanks all. Seems most of us have a story to tell
‘Effing possums’ indeed strauss. Shame they’re a protected species. WHY they’re protected though is still a mystry.
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