July 29, 2019

Rodents’ revenge

One of the less delightful aspects of living in a semi-rural suburb are the uninvited guests that tend to arrive with autumn, and then hang around during winter. They are of course, rodents, and we no sooner get rid of one lot than another lot soon realise there’s a vacancy, and move in. As considerate, if reluctant, hosts we do the hospitality thing and leave them ‘food’. Normally this does the trick and they do the decent thing and take off to die quietly away from the premises. But currently we have one (or several) of the little beasts who hasn’t, and consequently we’re dealing with the most appalling stench, which naturally is emanating directly above the kitchen/dining/living area.

When first noticed a couple of days ago, I thought it must be a gas ring not properly switched off on the cooker. Not so. By yesterday the reason for the stink was perfectly obvious. Retrieving the corpse however is next to impossible given the distance from the manhole ceiling entry, and the extreme difficulty in reaching it.

We shall just have to wait for rodents’ revenge to take its course, and hope the vases of paper whites, jonquils, daphne, and bowls of pot pourri hastily assembled with my extremely limited stock of essential oils, will serve to combat the putrid fug.

A couple of days with a nice warm breeze to blow through the rooms would be good too, but given the forecast I suspect that isn’t going to happen. Sigh.

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