Having defeated Mouse, then discovered he has allies, I have turned my attention to Rat.

Or perhaps Possum. I'm not sure. He's big, though.

He starts gallivanting in the attic around 10 p.m., right when I feel least like getting up and climbing the stairs with a flashlight to drive him off. I cannot imagine where he's getting in. I fenced off the louvers with welded wire mesh several months ago, after terminating a rat who'd found the invitation to free shelter irresistible. I'll troubleshoot for other gaps this weekend.

Meantime, this rodent/marsupial is keeping me up at night, but that's not the worst of it. A while back, I had shoveled all the rotten 50-year-old insulation out of the attic and rolled out fresh batts of fluffy R-19, eaves-to-eaves. It's beautiful up there, with cumulus mounds of silent pink fluff rolling as far as the eye can see.

Now peppered with rat droppings.

They crap everywhere, the bastards. All over the insulation and the half-sheets of plywood I laid up there so I could crawl around safely. Now I can't go anywhere without mashing their excrement into the knees of my jeans. And supposedly you can't vacuum it up without spreading hantavirus all over the county.

I scouted around up there tonight but couldn't get anything to show its face. Seeing where it'd apparently set up housekeeping under a layer of insulation, I grew furious enough to fetch the spray bottle of fox urine.

Yes, I said fox urine. Recommended by our contractor, it is normally used by hunters in ways that would probably prevent me from ever going hunting. I bought a bottle when we had squirrels up there, way back in 2001. They never returned. Obviously a good vintage, eh? Check the label: meat-fed & strong. We'll have none of that vegan fox urine, which wouldn't scare anything.

And boy, does this stuff stink. The contractor warned me not to get it on heat ducts, light bulbs, or any surface that might later wind up in our living space. Once, for grins, I sprayed some on the trunk of a tree. Wolf Dog compulsively marked the spot for days.

I hosed down the infested area, then set a minefield of rat and mouse traps surrounded by glue boards. I am still not sure what keeps cleaning me out of bait and leaving the traps unsprung. But I will welcome any sleep interruption that begins with a thwack and ends with thrashing. I want my attic back.

Tight as it is, I like the place, mainly for the solitude. Same reason that, once I get down below the house into the crawlspace with my coveralls, tools, headlamp, and—of course—cell phone, I end up wanting to stay a while. It's quiet, cool, and isolated; I can get my work done at my own pace with no interruptions. And although the attic has a rather crude way of enforcing its height limit—nails driven through by roofers 50 years ago—I like working in a controlled space where I know where everything is. If I set a hammer down right there, it will be in that same spot when I need it later. Kind of like writing, when I put stray sentences at the bottom for later incorporation.

Which this isn't, but it's as good a place as any to stop while I wait for a thwack.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:08 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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