This was the worst weekends we have had in a while.
Ian worked for most of the weekend. The poor guy worked all Saturday afternoon... so at 5:30 we thought we would have a quick hour to go out to dinner. He got a phone call right as we walked into the restaurant so he had to take it in the freezing car (for confidentiality reasons). He didn't finish the call until we were almost done with our dinners! The few hours that he was not working he tackled vacuuming up the rat crap in the basement (wearing the heaviest duty respirator mask I could find).
What was I doing? Battling ants... The exterminator treated our bathroom for ants... so they infested the kitchen AND the kid's bathroom. They were EVERYWHERE. There was a fine carpet of ants crawling over the stove and countertops. YUUUUUCK. I spent most of the weekend killing ants, cleaning up dead ants, and trying to caulk every crack I could find.
At one point I completely lost it... Ian was on the phone for the 4th hour in a row... the kids were cranky... and I was trying to deal with the carpet of ants in the kitchen. They were crawling up my arm and biting my chest. I went into the basement to try to look for caulk... and a HUGE rat ran up the pipe right over my head... I absolutely lost it. I sat on the stairs crying hysterically and contemplating abandoning the house to the various vermin... I needed to get OUT of the house so I took the kids to Home Depot... where I proceeded to run into 3 friends and the nicest Home Depot employee EVER. The guy saw that I was a wreck and helped me find everything on my list (filter mask, lysol, caulk, more ant poison). He kept making funny jokes and trying to cheer me up. He lives a couple of blocks away and he said everyone in his neighborhood periodically has rat problems. He recommended a cat as the solution -- he said that he has not had any rats since he got one. I was tempted to ask if we could borrow his. :-) I know people had outdoor cats... is there such a thing as a basement cat? (I am allergic to cats).
The kids were real troopers through all this. Ben kept being silly to try to cheer me up. At Home Depot they saw Santa hats and begged for them. After spending $50 on a respirator mask I didn't really want to buy the hats but said they could spend their own chore money on them. They bought them and have not taken them off since. They look SO cute. We also saw the coolest light/fan at Home Depot -- the light looked like earth and the fan blades had rockets painted on them.
8 comments:
OMG! What an experience in your basement. I'd have freaked out and had to be taken away in a straight jacket. It's time to move back up north.
poor katya... what you need to get is an abyssinian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyssinian_(cat)
because they are short hair, a lot of people with cat allergies don't react to them. plus they are a bit like dogs... very beautiful cats.
L
You could also get a hairless one. Pretty ugly though. Isn't Shadow a hunter? My Streusel wents nuts when she saw a mouse and she'd take off like a lightning bolt. She never did manage to catch one though.
Shadow must be as big hunter as Barsik ever was. Ones we had to move the bookshelf in the kitchen and found tons of his food stashed away by mice. I just can see him watching the mice stealing his food from the armchair.
Olga
Forgot to say it - leave basement alone, stay with ants, at least they are smaller
Olga
I agree with your mom about the basement. BTW, how is the ant/rat problem?
The rats seem to be decreasing in number and activity... the ants seem to have moved into my kitchen cabinet permanently.
Or at least I don't have the time/energy to fight them until Ben gets better.
Hmm... I don't think they have Abyssinians at the local shelter, tho. :-)
Post a Comment