Remember that line from an old Jimmy Cagney gangster movie, snarled just before he shot the stoolie who gave him away? Well, I'm repeating it, only literally.
There are many joys to living in southwestern Florida, the best of which is probably the most consistent good weather in the country. Yes, the summers are a steam bath usually, but in a good part of the country you get really hot summers. But, when the big freeze occurs up north, we only get a moderate bit of cooler weather.
But one disadvantage is we have is an incredible number of rodents, snakes and other varmints. As my handyman put it, "Those critters like the good weather, too." One of the nastiest rodents is the palm rat which, as the name implies, loves to inhabit and gambol in the palm trees. Since I live on a golf course fringed with many palms, plus we planted some when we built the house, we have plenty of palm rats. These are nasties with long tails and bodies from 4"-7" and are quite repulsive.
In our first year in the house, we were invaded by palm rats, who happily leave the palms for the warmth of a house and whatever they can grub upon. Fortunately, they did not get into the living quarters of our house. Living on an island we have to have two storeys, the bottom storey of which is a garage and large storage area because you are not allowed, because of flood possibilities in hurricane season, to live in the lower portion. A different handyman we had at the time thought he hear a scurrying sound in the insulation and checked out the insulation in the basement which contained batting material held up by a nylon scrim. One of these lovelies RAN DOWN HIS ARM and scurried away. He confesssed, sheepishly, that he screamed. I replied that I would have had to change my underwear if that happened to me! He found a whole family of the little monsters and got rid of them. We then had the basement sealed off, covvering all the beams.
Things were fine until a couple of weeks ago when I went into our "powder room" to use the facilities and was assailed by a rank decaying odor. It went away but returned last week with a vengeance, especially in the stairwell leading from the basement-garage to the main house. Because of droppings on tthe floor in a certain area of the basement, I had made the bad mistake of using De-Con a couple weeks before instead of setting multiple traps---a mistake my wife has forcibly reminded me of many times this week---and the De-Con poisoned the rats and they crawled away to die. The handyman had to cut into several areas of drywall and, bingo, he found two biggies in a pool of urine and excrement, quite dead. He thought they were male and female, and we hope they had not mated to reproduce a colony of babies.
After opening up the garage and basement area totally, garage doors and sliding glass doors and after multiple spraying of Lysol, the smell has almost disappeared. You still get faint whiffs in the stairwell, but it is disappearing. Fortunately, the living area has been fine, although we opened up windows in the bathrooms just to be sure and left them open for several days.
I'm pleased to report my wife is speaking to me again.
We are going to set multiple traps in the various rooms in the garage-basement. The handyman is going to check out all the walls and make sure any small opening, even large cracks, are filled with a plastic goop that even palm rats can't eat though.
I'm on a mission to get those dirty rats!
