Goodness knows, he left enough on the front porch. He must have slacked off when we didn’t bring them into the house and fry them up with sawmill gravy. I swept them off into the yard hoping they’d serve as warnings to new rats moving into the area.

Apparently not.

So as time went by, the rats that did not heed the dead in the yard and set up housekeeping in the crawl space and caused $2,500 worth of damage.

I guess we should have crawled around down there more often.  Or at least once. But there was no appeal to that, so we didn’t. The exterminators are under the house now. Better them than me. It’s almost worth $2,500 to never go in there.

The exterminator protects the house against termites. So how the guys stumbled across the rat infestation, I don’t know. Fortunately, no rats got into the main part of the house. And maybe as part of our crawl space investment, they (the exterminators) will post “warning signs” to keep new uninvited guests out of the place.

My tip to you–part of my lifelong learning experience–is if you have a crawl space, crawl inside from time to time. Make it a hobby.

–Malcolm

When Malcolm isn’t writing magical realism or posts about rats, he’s writing satire.