Rats redux: round two

Yesterday morning, my daughter sounded the alarm. "There's water dripping from the basement ceiling!" We quickly sprung into action, rolling up carpets, moving furniture and books, laying down towels and positioning buckets. We'd been there before, just six weeks earlier, so we knew exactly what to do and what had happened: rats had chewed through a water pipe—again! 

The first time, identifying the leak required taking down a good part of the basement ceiling, which was only just recently fully repaired, at considerable expense. Now, we have a new hole and water damage to the newly installed ceiling. And a huge mess to clean up—again!. 

Fortunately, this second leak wasn't as calamitous as the first because the plumber had installed shut-off valves on every water line when he fixed the first leak. At the time, my husband complained that this was excessive, but instead of having to turn off the water to the entire house as we did the first time, we were able to isolate the leaking pipe right away and keep the water on everywhere else.

We knew we had rats, of course. Before our (late) cat went blind, he used to sit on the deck and watch , fascinated, as the rats boldly helped themselves to the cat kibble from the bowls we put out for the raccoons. Since our cat was too old, or perhaps too smart, to go after the rats, they blithely ignored him even though he was mere inches away. 

At first, we were sure we had only one rat, whom we named Ratatouille. We enjoyed his antics so would alert each other whenever we spotted him digging in our compost heap, munching our figs, stealing kibble or gathering the remains of  the cob (a mixed-grain blend normally fed to horses) that my husband feeds the deer.  

"Don't worry," said my husband, "he lives outdoors. It's a country rat so it's healthy and clean." It soon became clear from the various sizes and colours of the individuals we started to see that we had a family of rats, whom we called The Rattingtons. We weren't overly concerned because, after all, they were healthy country rats and we found their behaviour amusing. We knew they lived in our woodpile under our deck and were stealing insulation from under the siding for their nests. When my husband got tired of dealing with rat feces on the wood he brought in for our woodstove, he set up a litter box for them in their area, which, to my surprise, they immediately began to use. He even gave them extra insulation because he noticed they liked to cover their feces with it. All of which demonstrated just how clean they were.

However, after the first leak and ruined ceiling, which cost us thousands of dollars to repair, our attitude to our rat family changed from indulgent to unforgiving. My husband set the usual snap traps and even made ingenious traps out of large buckets with hinged tops, all with little success.  Although we did catch one or two, mainly inexperienced juveniles, most of the time they used a stick to trip the snap traps —yes, yet another tool-using animal!—and ate the peanut-butter bait. The bucket traps were a complete failure. We began to suspect that our well-fed rats had advanced degrees in outsmarting us.

After leak number two, we have declared war on the rats. We've called in the experts, an extermination company from Vancouver Island, and are eagerly waiting their arrival by ferry in a few days. We haven't told the rats since we don't want to tip them off. This is one round we're determined to win.