Rat In Mi Kitchen

It’s OK. Relax. It’s not true. We just thought that the UB40 song provided a useful headline for today’s topic.

We like our house. We think it is, in property-speak, quite a des. res. The trouble is, so does much of the wildlife around here.

Now don’t get us wrong. We love the wildlife we encounter in the garden and surrounding countryside. It is a constant source of pleasure for us. Consider the salamander (pictured). This rather striking beasty can often be found lurking near the front of the house or in the long grass around the garden. Usually, they are only in evidence at night but it’s always a thrill to come across one.

Lizards abound here. They’re everywhere in the summer and every time we go for a walk we hear them scurrying off into the undergrowth as we approach. They have the most fantastic fights; lizards without a tail or a tail partly re-grown are commonplace and they really must be most remarkably tough and/or stupid as they leap to catch bumble bees for lunch.

Snakes too are reasonably common and Mrs A found three different sorts in the garden in the space of a few days. The first, a sort of grass snake, about 60cm in length and as thick as my thumb, could be found sunbathing by our part-time pond every morning. The second, a variety of aquatic snake, slender with a pink collar and about 30cm long was spotted in a similar place. The third, a viper, was lounging on the drive one day when we returned home.

Pine Martins, a fox and a hare are fairly regular visitors and as long as, in the case of the last of these, they don’t eat our vegetables, they’re most welcome.

However, where we draw the line is when those creatures which belong outside decide they want to share the house with us. Every year we find ourselves fighting battles against ants which, despite making no contribution whatsoever to the household budget, decide that regular access to all floors, even to the point this year of building a nest inside the house, is theirs by right. In our first couple of years here we had to take firm action to prevent first bees, then wasps and then bats (pictured) setting up home in various parts of the house.

At the moment, as far as we know, all is secure. However, we are suffering a related problem. The inner-skin of our roof is made of compressed polystyrene sheets (which form both the insulation and the sloping ceiling in our bedroom and the lounge) and the gap between it and the outer skin, the slates on the roof, has become a nocturnal playground for ‘Things’. This, we hardly need say, is not conducive to lengthy, untroubled sleep so we’re both a bit bleary eyed at the moment.

We can’t be entirely sure but we suspect these ‘Things’ are the very cute but incredibly pestilential ‘Loirs’, also know as the Edible Dormouse or Glis Glis. We can’t be sure because there is no way we can see them. However, given their reputation for eating through most materials, we expect one to be dropping in on us very soon. Now that will disturb our sleep!