The Rat Race

It seems our family has been having some unusual rodent problems as of late.
First of all, my sister found an unwelcome visitor in the form of a mouse in her basement. She discovered the thing was coming up to the kitchen at night through a hole underneath the oven. My brother in law pulled out the oven and plugged up any access points, trapping the poor mouse upstairs. They weren't even sure if it was one or two or more mice, so they got a glue trap and immediately caught their first victim - my 19 month old niece Mikaylah. She wasn't too keen about having this thing stuck to her, so they tried again after putting her to bed, and lo and behold - little brown mouse - still squeaking and trying to get the cheerio bait. In the end it was only one mouse after all.

But this blog is really about a rat.
A rather clever rat.

My parents have a birdfeeder outside. Over the summer they get a variety of winged visitors, as well as hummingbirds in their hummingbird feeder. They originally had the bird feeder just outside their bay window, but those nasty little squirrels were just climbing up the eavestrough and along the windowledge to steal the poor birdies food, so they moved it into the centre of their yard near a giant liloc bush so the squirrels couldn't get at it.

Enter the rat.

Rats can scale a pole much better than a squirrel apparently.

this particular one was grabbing up large mouthfuls of birdseed and taking off with it towards the driveway. It disappeared under my dad's car and a few minutes later reemerged to take another pass at the birdfeeder.
Another mouthful and off it took under the car again. Came back for another mouthful
This time my dad decided to follow the clever little rat. He crouched down to see where it would go after it ran under the car.
It went straight up into the engine.
dad opened the hood and sure enough, a neat little pile of birdseed was resting there on his engine.
He brushed it off and moved the car into the street.
Rat grabbed another mouthful of birdseed, and seeing that his storage facility had closed it's doors, he changed his patronage - this time he ran under my mom's car.
Dad opened up her hood - Sure enough, another little pile of birdseed. Why this rat was stockpiling in the engine, we'll never know - seems rather dangerous. Maybe it was a rat with a deathwish.
In any case, the driveway was now empty - for my visiting uncle to park his car into.

My dad and his brother are off at the Royal Winter Fair today. When they get home, they will open up the hood of my uncle's car in the driveway - I'm pretty sure they'll find a little pile of birdseed.

If anyone has any unique ways to get rid of said rat - I'm listening - and my mom is reading. Any method that results in dead rat in the engine is not suitable though.

For some reason I'm reminded of a certain Monty Python sketch now....... One piece of raspberry tart without so much rat in it later......