Friday, May 22, 2009

The rat in my attic

Well it was so horrible I have to share. Thank God, it has nothing to do with my children! 
Anyways, about two days ago, Wednesday I think, I came into work and smelt the most horrific thing I'd ever smelt in my life. It made me want to puke. Being a mommy, I went straight to work cleaning things. All good mommies have, at one point or another, neglected a trash can, toilet, fridge or just the kitchen in general and things start to smell. And, those good mommies smell it and proceed to clean until the smell has been resolved. 
Well, I cleaned both bathrooms. I took out all the trash. I cleaned the fridge. I cleaned the microwave. I cleaned behind the fridge and microwave. I looked under tables and everything. Well, I found nothing gross and the smell didn't go away. I figured maybe I was crazy. I sprayed some lysol and set to work. First customer that walked in goes "Eeeh, I don't mean to be rude, but what is that smell?" 
I apologized to the man and helped him with his phone, conversating the whole time about what it might be. I explained I'd cleaned thouroughly and couldn't find anything gross. Well, he believed that something had died in here. 
Charlestonians, this happens alot here, apparently. I was shocked because of the number of things dead on the highway regularly. My mother in law had a possum die under her house and that was nasty. I have never had the pleasure (HAH) of such an issue. 
The worst I've had in my house was mice -- small ones -- about 3 inches long. I wanted to be humane and catch them in boxes and set them free. This got out of hand quickly and we had to spend about $100 in poisen and repellants and other things to finally get them all out. They multiply quickly. I don't want to consider how many mice were in my house but it took 6 months to get it all cleaned up and thrown out -- all the poop and dead mice remains and things they'd destroyed. It was horrific. 
Anyway, I figured "oh a rat? they don't make that much smell. We've had rats in my house and it wasn't really this bad." The man laughed. "How big were they?" he asked. "About 3 inches." "Those are mice. I mean a rat." The man holds up his hands and shows me that he means a varmit the size of a cat. I almost fainted at the prospect of such a creature running around above my head all day long. What would happen if it fell through on a customer -- or me? Dear God, this was an awful concept. 
Well the day drug on and I was alone Wednesday so I had no clue as to what to do about it. Maybe, I thought, it will just go away. Maybe it's not a rat, someone just puked or something and it will disentigrate and stop smelling. LOL I was wrong. Thursday, it was even worse. When I opened the door on Thursday morning, I almost threw up. I looked at my co-worker and told him I'd cleaned everything and didn't know what to do about it. He concluded it was indeed something dead, then. We agreed it was in the ceiling in the men's bathroom. We called the landlord. He came in, smelt it and left. He agreed it was something dead. I propped the doors open to let us breathe. 
A pest control man came in, took one look at the ceiling in the bathroom and told us 2 things that he knew for sure. #1 - something was dead. He said the type of flies we had around only came to eat something that had died. (gross) #2 - he didn't have ladder high enough to get it out. Well, the landlord spent all day supposedly trying to find someone to get it and according to him, "no one will do it." So, at 5:30 I took over and called everyone google yellow pages gave me until I got someone to come get it out. Cost the landlord $90. The poor guy almost threw up when he opened the ceiling tile. He had to come down and go outside for 5 minutes and smoke because he couldn't bear the smell. 
At 6:00pm I left. LOL. It wasn't my problem anymore. The poor man pulled out a rat that was about a foot long and weighed about 5lbs. I came in today and lit candles all over the store. About 2 hours of burning and it doesn't smell so bad in here. 

This was my adventure for the day. I couldn't believe it. It was ridiculous. Creatures the size of full grown cats are in my attic. They laid out poisen and told us to listen for more. The pest control people will be back to check in a week or two. Apparently, they think several rats may be up there. *shivers* 

YUCK

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