UPDATE UPDATE

for those interested in my RAT story............there is news.........sorta..........

when i got home the day i wrote my last entry, i was expecting to find a very angry rat caught in my mouse trap, carrying the trap around with him/her.  i cautiously entered the pantry, pulled the box of used plastic grocery bags out of the corner, ready to run if i had to.  instead, i found a pile of sugar sweetened cereal balls in a corner surrounded by yellow stains on the linoleum, and little rat pellets........but no blood, no guts, and no rat or trap.  mmmmmmmm........so where was the other trap???? 

i looked in the box of snack sized bags of cheetohs that was also on the floor, thinking maybe it fell in there and was trapped in the trap.  there was the trap......upside down in the box, on top of the forty or fifty bags of cheetohs, but apparently, there was nothing in it (the trap).  i slowly turned it over and nothing.  no blood or even a sign that it had been touched, other than it was sprung.  sigh...........

i scoured the numerous shelves i have in my huge pantry and found what the source of nourishment had been.  i had gotten several bags of cereal that didn't have boxes.  one was a sweetened round cereal.  this little (or rather big) rat had made a small hole in one end of the cereal bag and the balls were slowly falling out onto the floor, where de rat was having a picnic.  when the cereal on the floor was gone, de rat would make another trip up and make more fall out.  funny thing is this..........we americans have become so used to bypassing healthy foods for sugary ones that we have even trained our rat friends to do the same.  there was a large bag of raison bran under the sugary cereal, and it had a very very small hole in it.  and nothing seemed to be disturbed........too healthy i guess.  but the sugary stuff had a nice rat-head size hole.  must be a teen rat, lol.

i cleaned up the mess, poured full strength bleach around the corners and let it soak, then mopped it up, and then got a ladder and cleaned the shelves.  upon closer inspection, de rat had been all over my food in the pantry............i have numerous cans, boxes, bags, etc. and there were telltale signs all over the place.  either little pellets or yellow stains, or even worse, gnaw marks.  i had a full canister of malt for malted milk, which i had only used once........and de rat gnawed the plastic lid enough to get a good taste of my malt.  i threw the whole canister away...........ewwwwww. 

i put everything that would go into water into a sink of soapy water and washed it all down.  the items that were in bags that might have small holes in them were tossed, and the thicker bags that didn't have holes were sponged down with bleach water.  i still don't feel clean in there.  i scrubbed the kitchen again and placed all the traps in places where de rat would have to step on it without seeing it first.  then i put out poison pellets in the nesting areas.  so far, nothing.  but i think i know why............

another rat tail........i mean tale.............

a few days ago i was watching  tv and noticed my kitty doing some odd maneuvers over under the front window.  i have a couple of boxes of crochet yarn over there, so got up to see what she was doing, and to make sure she wasn't batting around a ball of good yarn.  she has her own yarn, lol.

when i got over to the window, she looked frantic, and kept sniffing around under the window sill.  there was once some really bad water damage there, and was "repaired" in a ghetto style, meaning it was sorta piecemealed together and plastered over and painted.  the plaster is very thick there, and there is a small gap in the baseboard, about a quarter of an inch.  nothing but a spider or small bug could get through there.

i pulled the boxes back, expecting to see something running along the baseboard.  when i got closer to the floor, i heard something..........at first i thought it was baby birds chirping, and figured maybe a mama bird had come up under the tin roof and layed her eggs.  but then, the sound moved a little further down the wall.  mmmmmm, baby birds don't usually move till they are ready to fly.  i listened intently as my kitty paced.  it then sounded like a ............oh no..........a...........RAT!!!  it WAS a rat.  i am only assuming that it is DE RAT!  i figure the snapping of the traps with all the goodies in the kitchen had frightened it and it decided to find something else to do.  so it made its way all the way around from the kitchen to my bedroom.  then again, it could be one of a large family living in the attic.........over my head..........that came down to visit.  either way, it IS A RAT!!!  it sounded trapped, and momentarily i felt sorry for it.  then i thought about how close my bed was to that window, and how much i would hate for a rat to be sleeping with me.............so............i started stomping my foot, and beating on  the  wall, then realized i could beat  a hole in the poor plaster job, so stopped.  i got my hammer and went back to the baseboard and whacked it a few times.  it remained in the wall. 

then.........i thought of something that may or may not do any good, but it was all i could do.  i went to the kitchen, poured some bleach into a container, grabbed a small tipped funnel, and went back to the bedroom.  i put the funnel tip into the small space in the baseboard and poured the bleach water little by little.  i have no clue where it ended up.  it may be dripping down the wallpaper in the living room in the downstairs apartment, but i was hoping that at least the smell would run de rat or his/her family member away from my bedroom wall.  it worked..........it left.....or drank the bleach and died.  either way, doesn't matter, it isn't there anymore.  if it starts stinking, i can spray aerosol or burn a candle, as long as de rat is gone. 

i would tell my landlord about it and he could have pest control come out, but i have my kitty to think about.  i am not supposed to have a kitty, and if they come, they will put out poison and my kitty might get hold of it.  i would die myself.  she is my little devilish guardian angel.

i have more or less succumbed to the idea that i have new "friends" living with me.  i was hoping the wild bunch living on the back porch would keep rodents away, but so far, it hasn't worked.

speaking of the wild bunch...........i got some pictures of ditto and a really cool picture of a cloud formation over the church across the street from me.  but i, being the dummy i am, forgot to put them on my flash drive and bring them with me.  so i will have to do that some other time.

ok, i better close this entry before it becomes a novelette..........oops....too late, lol.