Yes, there is one or more rats again in my rectory. I doubt if this house has ever been free of them! A couple of months ago I heard an animal in the wall behind our stove in the kitchen. We called our rat exterminator and he couldn't find a trace of one. This past week Fr. Dawid heard the scratching again in the kitchen. I asked our maintenance man to pull the stove away from the wall and sure enough there was nesting material the rat had placed there! We have a stove that exhausts from the bottom of the stove and there was a small hole in the wall where the exhaust goes outside. So we pulled that out, to look what was in the wall and sure enough there was a huge nest full of rat urine and feces that the maintenance man pulled out. It was disgusting. I believe these nests are throughout the house's walls as these rats can travel from the attic of the house which is four floors up to the kitchen level with is ground level (this is a three story house).
We've place four huge rat traps in strategic places and now for almost a week and nothing! The kitchen now smells like a rat's nest since we opened the wall behind the stove, completely disgusting and I won't even go down there!
I've been here nine years and this rat is more than likely the 12th rat that I know of the others having been exterminated!
Please pray for me and my sanity. I am at my rope's end with this, but I am keeping my sense of humor about it and kind of accept the fact I live in a house with rats apart from my parochial vicars over the years and currently.
7 comments:
Father:
The rectory of St. Joseph is a metaphor for the Church at large.
Purification comes slowly. Got to get them ALL! Praying unceasingly.
There's a deprecatory blessing against pests in the older Roman Ritual.
If you want to borrow my cats for a weekend, they work for cheap! :-D
You know, you could get some .22 shorts (they are quiet) and shoot those things. They probably taste like squirrel all dressed out. Serve them with grits and biscuits...talk about self-denial...yummm!!! LOL!
In order to protect Father Dawid from being collateral damage in this War on Fievel, I say no to guns! We don't need a shoot first, ask for reconciliation later approach! ;-)
Father,
Your sense of humor is commendable, but this is distressing I am sure. It may take some effort and expense but experts in pest/animal control surely can find a way to address this problem once and for all.
Interestingly, as you may know, they used to put rats on trial in the ecclesiastical courts and impose a spiritual sanction:
http://www.globalanimal.org/2011/02/14/medieval-court-cases-animals-on-trial/29793/
I study this phenomenon with my students. It is quite fascinating.
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