I Smell a Rat

No, this is not a political post. :-)

And I'm starting out with a pretty picture because that's what will show up on my Facebook link, and this is not a pretty topic.

When we travel, as we did at the first of this month, we have our kids come and check on our cat from time to time, usually about every two days. Josy is an indoor/outdoor cat and comes and goes as she pleases through two cat doors into the garage and then into the house. But Josy gets lonely and misses us when we are gone, so she tends to hunt more and bring us gifts.  

After we returned from this latest trip, we were sitting in the family room and we saw a rat run across the floor. Oh no, Josy brought in a gift that wasn't dead! 

It has happened before. When we tried to see where the rat was going, it disappeared. We watched for it, and signs of it, and saw it again the next evening, but when we tried to corner it, it disappeared somewhere along the base of the kitchen island. 

I got down and crawled around and found this small opening where the molding left a gap with the kick board in the corner cabinet. 

 I found a few cobwebs too.

Well, we set a trap and watched for the rat to emerge, hoping we could plug the hole, corner it and chase it out the patio slider the cupboard was right next to. 

But we never saw it again, or any trace of it. We couldn't very well tear up the kitchen to look for it, and we worried about a mess accumulating under there. But then the odor emerging became much more one of something rotten and decaying. 

Well, now what. I went on line to see what I could find about a dead rat odor in the house. You know, if it happens to you, it seems it has happened to someone else, and there was all kinds of advice. Aside from tearing up the house the answer seemed to be managing the odor until the dead rat dried up.  These products, available from Amazon Prime, were recommended. 

 We got them on a two day delivery and began spraying the adjacent cupboards and propped the odor absorbent next to the hole. 

We've used the spray several times, and leave the slider door open for an hour of so when we have the heat turned down. 

It hasn't been terrible, but it is still a bit stinky. You can still smell a rat. 

So here are more pretty pictures. The dogwood and the maple in the back yard have gone crimson. 

We'll try not to think about the rat.