Last night I walked into my dining room to discover a rather distressed blackbird flapping across the enclosed room. His only possible entry would have been rather unceremoniously down our chimney – eeeek! Just to be clear from the start, I do not regard the blackbird as a pest.
I obligingly opened the patio doors into the garden for him so that he could fly back into the wild where he belongs.
I then spent the rest of the evening cleaning poo off our lovely oak wood flooring, mantelpiece, dining table and chairs!
It is what happened next that has started to freak me out a little and got me thinking about how pest control is affecting my life.
So, after all the cleaning up, we finally get into bed and hear a pretty loud scratching noise. Our immediate thought was that the same bird had fallen down the chimney again – that really would have been bad luck, or good luck according to Alicia’s recent post on animal superstitions!
On further investigation the scratching noise was coming from inside the brick wall directly above the patio doors in the dining room. Well, eventually the scratching noise stopped…and has not been heard since. That was one day ago.
Our house has solid brick walls, concrete floors and cavity wall insulation, which I thought would be as good a defence as any against possible ‘invasions’. However, no house can ever be totally pest proof. Also, we live in a semi and it is not unusual for pests to invade a neighbouring property.
Rats and mice are talented at finding the smallest of gaps to gain access inside our homes and they can pretty much chew and gnaw through more materials than you would care to imagine. We do think it could potentially have been a rodent of some sort, though we cannot be sure.
I actually don’t mind pet rats at all. My sister-in-law had a pet rat called Reggie and she always claimed how intelligent he was, but he died from a weak heart, which made me very sad.
Anyways, I am now also starting to think that working for a pest control company has somehow jinxed my life. Prior to this role, I never encountered any pest problems, but here is my list to date:
Rat problem forces my friends (with a young baby) to move out of their home for 3 months in November 2008
Fly invasion in my parents’ living room from the supposedly sealed chimney in May 2009
My first ever wasp sting in June 2010 – painful and leaves big red blotch on my arm
Flying ants invasion in my garden in July 2010
Ant invasion in my house in August 2010
What does 2011 hold in store for me and my house I wonder?
Brigitta, I have to say that I found this story very funny when I first heard it from you, and since then, I don´t think that the spiders of my bathroom are that bad any more…