I hate rats.

Normally I’m a passive sort of bloke and don’t hold any ill will towards any creature. Except maybe ticks. Or Sarcoptic Mange Mites. Fortunately I rarely cross paths with the latter two so my venom can be concentrated entirely on rats.

We had a rat a while back. I only saw him a couple of times but the little cunt did a lot of damage. I may have seem little of him but I heard a lot. He was a noisy little shit. He chewed his way through a couple of areas in the bathroom but his most notable, most dramatic, most expensive trick was to chew a chunk out of a central heating pipe somewhere under the floorboards. It cost a fucking fortune to repair that damage and the sitting room oak floorboards have never been quite the same since.

I laid traps. He never went near them. I put down poison. He just ate it and came back for more. After a while I stopped hearing him and he was either dead [I hope] or had buggered off.

My next job was to discover how the little bollocks got into the house in the first place. I eventually worked it out. Part of the garage door frame had rotted a little and he must have used that. From the garage he could easily gain access to the underfloor area by following the heating pipes. Again, following the pipes he could climb up into the bathroom as there is easy access up to the immersion heater. I sealed the garage door frame with expanding foam as that was the only place which could be sealed.

We haven’t had a rat since. Mice, yes. a couple of times [I have no idea how they got in] but not rats.

Yesterday Herself called me to come and see a strange bird on the bird table outside her window.

It wasn’t a bird.

It was a fucking rat!

I opened the window and tried to spear him with a sharp stick. I missed and he shot down to ground level and scurried into the bushes.

I am now on full rat-alert.