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Post by disorganizeddragon on Aug 5, 2013 2:35:45 GMT -5
I suspect, since the report was found to be false, the person who made it may very well face some legal/punitative ramifications of their own. Budgets are tight and resources stretched thin. I suspect protective service agencies such as animal control take a very dim view of reports that send them on a wild goose chase. This may very well come back to haunt the reporter in a very real way. Karma really does have a way of working these things out sometime  Moral of this story: if you haven.t seen circumstances with your own eyes then best to keep reports to yourself. Oh. And just in case there.s ANYONE here who doesn.t KNOW this by now, not everything you see/read on the internet is true, even here at soos  Stop it. You mean those nice people in Nigeria won't give me $3.8 million from a bank account in the Bahamas if I pay $150,000 to a lawyer named Sonny in Miami who has an office in the back of a UHaul truck? And the guy I met online is not really a German underwear model that's also heir to a strudel fortune? Oh, this is so depressing--I was really looking forward to eating all that strudel with a cute guy while surrounded by piles of money. (sigh) |
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Post by Perfect Mess on Aug 5, 2013 11:17:53 GMT -5
 !! You guys crack me up. It's good to laugh in the face of .... diversity. So I just called the exterminator and he will be coming to my house on Saturday. He made it sound like it was no big deal and that he'd have the rat situation taken care of in a couple weeks of trapping. Especially since I've caught so many already. NOW I feel good because I know my troubles will soon be coming to an end. Hard to believe, but I'm STILL not happy with my house. The floor is not clean enough. After 8 people have come thru to clean my house, I am still not happy with the floor. THAT'S how bad my floor was/is. The whole house has terracotta tile with white grout lines and everything just sticks out like a sore thumb on those grout lines. AND my 16 year old dog continues to have loose stools in the living room after it was cleaned. I had to clean after him twice yesterday. I think I'm going to have to break down and just get on my knees and scrub those areas myself. |
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Post by anonymoose on Aug 5, 2013 11:32:53 GMT -5
You're a much better person than I am. I removed myself from the board for MONTHS after things I posted on the private forum (including pictures) made their way to other websites for bashing and analysis. It's a great site to get support and most people here are amazing, but there are some folks who sign up here for personal amusement and the satisfaction of feeling "better" than someone else. Guess we all need to remember at the end of the day that there isn't any true security on the internet. Glad you were able to get people out there to help! If I had the $, I promise I'd just hire some crime scene cleaners to come into my old place and empty it, drywall and all, . |
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Post by Perfect Mess on Aug 5, 2013 11:40:06 GMT -5
Well, it certainly has woken me up a little. I'm an open book online which is good and bad. I knew it could be bad too, but... I think now it's more of a reality how that could backfire. I'm still processing the information in my head and when I'm done, I may make some changes to protect myself because it's not just about me, it's about my kids too, and there are a lot of crazies out there.
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Post by PaperGrace on Aug 5, 2013 12:14:01 GMT -5
Well, it certainly has woken me up a little. I'm an open book online which is good and bad. I knew it could be bad too, but... I think now it's more of a reality how that could backfire. I'm still processing the information in my head and when I'm done, I may make some changes to protect myself because it's not just about me, it's about my kids too, and there are a lot of crazies out there. That is a factor that I've considered too. I can be found, for sure. If some unhealthy person decided that they REALLY wanted to see my house for themselves they could. I have these factors that keep me from worrying overmuch: I don't live alone with my kids. I'm married, AND have a couch surfer several days a week. We live in a building with other apartments and businesses, and have fostered relationships with those neighbors. Of those neighbors several are men who have studied martial arts and/or have been trained in the use of guns. This makes me feel safer than having guns in my house or having neighbors with guns--the training and the focus make a difference here. The last thing I need is some "helpful" nut or flakey panicked person causing an accident with a pistol. My neighbors are not the type to come running out to shoot someone, and at least two of them could probably disarm someone trying to threaten my family. I live in a 'quick response' area in my town. Police and/or rescue will be here in a heartbeat if there's trouble. I know none of this means that I'm insulated from harm. A crazy could still cause me or my family harm before they're discovered, but that's true in general anyway, whether or not that person found me online. I do worry for people who are more isolated than me, or otherwise easier targets. |
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Post by lula on Aug 5, 2013 14:25:40 GMT -5
Perfectmess and Anonymoose, I am so glad you both came back. Yes, we ought to take some steps at self-protection (hence, I do not do "social media" websites) but we also need to feel free to be ourselves. For someone (in Anonymoose's case) to steal pictures from here and post them elsewhere for judgment is terrible. As for safety at home, there is only so much you can do. For years I've toyed with the idea of getting a shotgun, but I don't know. I was offered a pistol by my cop boyfriend after an attempted rape, but I did not feel comfortable with it in my home and returned it. There are other methods for self-protection. Ever watch Home Alone? |
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Post by def6 on Aug 5, 2013 15:10:49 GMT -5
Hello Perfect Mess,
I remember those recent debates. When I saw your video- it really put my mind to ease- because you just looked like a person that could handle anything life threw at you. Congrats for passing Animal Control inspection and for getting your house sanitized. I hope you can keep the rats out from now on.
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Post by heretoday on Aug 6, 2013 2:47:08 GMT -5
wow I'm glad I didn't post here when I had kids at home and cats and a rat problem. I finally got rid of them myself by using poison in the crawl space. If anyone should have been reported it should have been the landlord for renting out a house with entrance holes eaten into the wood. I had a neighbour board them up after I got rid of the rats and paid him to do it. We thought we were lucky to be able to rent a house as I was a single parent.
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Post by joyinvirginia on Aug 6, 2013 3:21:51 GMT -5
Perfect mess, so glad the rat problem will be taken care of soon! So sorry you had someone call about you! I post a lot of personal things here, but never anything I would not want to tell my neighbor. And I am kinda vague on purpose about details about work or other specifics. I am on another board where I have seen young mothers post names, photos and complete birthdates of their children, and I always send a pm to caution them, not everyone on the internet is benign.
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Post by Perfect Mess on Aug 7, 2013 10:37:38 GMT -5
I really appreciate all the POSITIVE support I have received on this board. You guys are great!!!
So the exterminator will be out in 3 days, which is good. And I actually thought I had a good handle on the rat population anyway, until last night.
So I'm called from my job around 5am to help fix a problem. After I was done (around 6am) I go into my freshly disinfected kitchen to get a snack when I hear something rummaging around under the snake cage. The snake "cage" is really just a box with glass front that sits on top of my old 55 gallon fish tank stand. The stand has two cabinet doors. There is movement behind one of the doors. And now that my floor is devoid of any litter, I notice the sunflower seed shells ALL OVER the floor in front of this tank stand. I knew it was rats, so I open the cabinet door and 3 rats take off running. I thought that was the end of that so I closed the door and went back to my snack. Then I heard MORE rummaging. I open the door again and just stand there staring into it. This tiny rat head pops up , he doesn't see me. He scans the area left to right and then hides again. when I slam the door shut to scare the crap out of them, 2 more go running. That's five (5) rats in there eating my parrot's food. WoW...
When I go back to the kitchen, I notice something has shredded some of the aluminum foil covering my stove catch trays. Then I notice the fresh rat droppings on my counter top behind the wine rack. Oy...
Yea, I'm glad I called a professional.
... and I'm gonna need to disinfect that kitchen a second time.
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Post by aa on Aug 7, 2013 10:54:07 GMT -5
That sucks that you found more! Will you share what tactics the exterminator uses that differ from what you have already tried? So proud of you for sticking around!
We found mouse droppings in a closet in the house we are renovating. Why are they even there? There's no food or water (aside from what it is the one toilet). All the debris has been taken away. Just goes to show that squalor certainly doesn't have anything to do with it! Thankfully my cats ARE mousers, but that won't help until we get moved in. If we find any more signs we will set traps, but we'll then have to go to the house frequently as I certainly don't want dead mouse smell.
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Post by bigrae on Aug 7, 2013 11:04:55 GMT -5
Glad,you have professional help coming there is almost certainly more than you think,when we had them initially we thought there was just one maybe two but there was way more as we found out.
Once we found where they were getting in and blocked it that was the turning point in eradicating the little blighters.Also ours were very keen on sugar puffs so we baited with that but a pro pest control will have their own ideas
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Post by eagle on Aug 7, 2013 11:53:38 GMT -5
Have you searched for all their entry areas and blocked them with steel wool? It's a very effective method to prevent more from coming inside. It does nothing to deal with the ones already inside, but it does prevent more coming in. Remember they can get in through the tiniest holes, so you may need lots of steel wool to stuff into the holes.
I lived in the mountains for a few years and we had a rat a population that was very persistent and really amazingly bold. The came out in the day time to eat at my bird feeders. They crawled on our deck. One even chewed through part of the decking when I trapped it with a terra cotta pot. They chewed through plastic bins of stuff I had stored in the garage. They chewed through the natural gas pipes (plastic) that carried the heating fuel to our house. They lived in the 'crawlspace' (we could actually stand under the house so crawlspace is a relative term). And when we blocked the entry to the crawlspace with thin wire mesh, they chewed through it. But they don't bother with steel wool. We killed so many rats, I lost count. Eventually we got rid of them, but it was no easy task, especially when you live somewhere where they have unlimited places to make their home (like the mountains) and you don't want to use poison. These were the kinds of rats that normally lived in holes in the ground. Actually, we only got rid of the ones plaguing the house, I doubt we got rid of the entire population in the mountains.
Anyway, I now use steel wool whenever I find an entry area into the house. I have found it to be very effective keeping rodents out of the house where we now live.
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Post by lula on Aug 9, 2013 0:07:37 GMT -5
I sould imagine using steel storage bins for pet food and the like would also help, if they have secure lids. Sorry you have this problem; it would totally freak me out.
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Post by Perfect Mess on Aug 10, 2013 23:53:51 GMT -5
The exterminator came today. He's done this so many times that he just made it all seem too easy. He surveyed the property on the outside and then climbed onto the roof. He found 4 openings the rats could be using to get in and covered them with steel mesh. He then came inside and set 10 large traps in the garage and attic. That's it. He charges extra to empty and reset the traps everyday so I'll be doing that myself. Too easy. But I think we need more traps inside the house, not just the attic and garage. I have a bag of volkmans for my birds on the kitchen counter Ive moved into a large ziplock bag that keeps getting torn into DURING THE DAY, I've had to rebag it twice since this morning. It seems that since we have cleaned the entire house so well, the rats are desperate to find food. They are even trying to chew their way into the 5-gallon dog food bucket which is very thick and hard plastic with a screw on lid. So when I got up this morning, there were plastic shavings all over the floor around the dog food bucket. There must be nothing left to eat anywhere else if they're going to these lengths. We have no food out so they are eating the bird food in the cages at night too. I worry about my 2 birds if the rats get desperate enough to attack them. No idea if a rat would try to kill a bird and I rather not have to find out.
Hopefully all this means is that they will be trapped easier as those traps are all baited.
The exterminator said he found a lot of evidence that there are a lot of rats living right outside our house. So they aren't all breeding inside the house. No wonder I was fighting a losing battle all this time.
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