It’s been going on now for a couple of weeks…. the scratching, not all the time, just now and then. I can be sitting at the PC and there it is… a scratching, scurrying kind of noise… the other night laying there in bed… it’s 4am ish and there it iss… scurry, scratch… scurry and so on… (insomnia is a terrible thing!).

Then the other day I thought… right I’m going up to the roof space (they call it that here.. I call it a loft or an attic) so out I came with the ladder to get up there. Now I don’t know about your place but my place has a hatch for the loft in a spare room… which is fractionally larger than my shoulders… I say fractionally in truth it’s 2cm or for those of you with an imperial bent (you know in the new world!) that’s just under an inch…) my point is, it’s  tight fit. It then opens to a crawl space…. complete with rafters but no walk boards or I should say crawl boards which goes on for maybe 70 meters, ok maybe 2 meters but in the dark it seems bigger (no smart comments from the ladies!)  but then opens up to what can only be described as an enormous area around the same size as Gibraltar!… but without the monkeys… well assuming that it’s not the monkeys doing the scratching. Anyway… the point is the roof space is flipping large.

So off I went, to the roof after unfolding my ladder… I’ve got one of those ones that you can fold up so many times you can store it in your pocket… tends to weigh you down on one side but it can be done. Of course it also takes a flaming age to unfold but  it gets there. So yes… I’m there standing in the middle of my roof space / loft/ attic and then I remember… I wired in a flaming light!.. so 5 mins later I’m back there in this spacious room in complete brightness when I spot the culprit…. it moves like a rocket!… I’m sure I saw fangs and certainly had claws the size of a polar bar.. but with brown fur, or is that a grizzly? But it was too fast and I lost the trail fairly quickly.

So now I’ve been to the local hardware store to stock up on supplies… I have my rat traps… they look seriously mean I have to say, apparently, according to the expert in the shop the best bait for these little guys is peanut butter! who would have thought!.. wonder if they prefer crunchy?

 

So I have my traps but that’s not enough, I mean what if they don’t want peanut butter?.. well my back up is the good old Talon one feed… which contains a human taste deterrent!.. no idea what that is or how they tested it and frankly I don’t want to know!…

So now I have the plan.. to rid myself of that noise… the scratching and above all else the fact that it’s up there…. scratching in the dark!.. and not paying rent!