The Unwanted Visitor

This happened in late August of this year and I have finally wrote it down to share:

Sitting at the kitchen table – multi tasking – Heather is listening/watching a movie on the television, reading “The Work and The Glory – book 1” and checking emails on her laptop.  A typical young adult!  (Heather is my niece visiting from Pennsylvania for about a week before she heads to Rexburg, Idaho to finish her last semester at BYU Idaho)

 

Upon completing husking corn and getting the pot on the store to start dinner, I sit in the recliner to rest a few minutes before heading back to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner.  Suddenly and very quietly, Heather says, “What was that?”  Looking over to Heather and to see where she is staring, I notice that I fuzzy long tail is going under the refrigerator – “It looks like a pack rat – How did that get into the cabin?”  In the seven years of living here in the cabin, there has only a chipmunk and a few hummingbirds that have gotten inside.

Heather slowly tucks her socked feet up into her chair, doesn’t move otherwise and is constantly watching the floor by the refrigerator.  Meanwhile, I quickly gathers item within the cabin to try to block the packrat from escaping within the cabin.  What a maze of objects to build a fence.  The ironing board, a table bench, pieces of lumber to cover space under railings, closing of bedroom and laundry room doors.  Grabbed large towels to roll up to place at the base of the doors.  After the maze is complete, I call Gary at work requesting that he stops and get some traps – live or whatever to catch this visitor.  He can tell just by my voice that I am still shaken up by seeing it inside the cabin.

So while waiting for Gary to arrive home, Heather doesn’t move from her chair at the table but she continues watching the refrigerator.  Then a squeal is heard “OH!”  The packrat is peeking out and quickly goes back under the refrigerator.

 Gary arrives home, surveys the situation and maze in the kitchen and gets busy.  He drives over to the scout camp and borrows their two live traps.  Locates the mice traps and starts setting up along in front of the refrigerator.  The packrat would have a slim chance of getting through the maze of traps.

A request is made to go to dinner since the kitchen is full of booby traps and possibility of having it run across your feet was not wanted!

Heather decides to move and head downstairs to her bedroom to retrieve her shoes.  She is gone about ten minutes – later she tells us that she put towels along the inside of her two doors to keep it out of her bedroom.

We left for dinner, leaving the cat and the dog inside hoping maybe they might catch it!  Upon returning home about an hour and half later, we quietly walk over to see if anything was caught – NOTHING!  One of the mice traps was sprung and moved about four inches from where it was originally set.  Well – where did it go then?  We hoped that it was still blocked off and went into the laundry room.  So with traps in hand, they are moved into the laundry room, both doors closed with towels on the outside on the doors.

We decide to go to bed in hopes that it will be caught during the night.  Morning comes and Gary checks the laundry room – nothing is in the traps.  Both Gary and I had to leave for work early and Heather is still sleeping.  When I get home that afternoon, Heather is back sitting at the kitchen table – multi-tasking again.  She has not seen or heard anything at all during the day.  So I let Charlie – our lab – inside and he immediately goes to the stereo speaker on the entertainment center.  Whining and pawing at the floor and doesn’t want to leave for anything!  So I get the flashlight, look under the entertainment center and under the end table.  I notice in the back of the speaker – there is a hole and it looks like some of the dust has been moved.  So I gather two boards to cover up the hole in the speaker and feel very confident that we have it trapped inside.  Charlie is still sniffing and won’t leave that spot. 

I sense that Heather has relaxed a little knowing that the packrat is safely inside the speaker.  An hour and half later – she lets out “There it goes behind the couch!”  How did it get out this time?  I grab the live traps and place one at either end of the couch.  Heather is watching one end and I am watching the other end.  He peeks out once and quickly returns under the couch. 

 Fifteen minutes pass and Heather sees movement out of the corner of her eye and says, “There it goes down the stairs!”  “Are you sure?”  She gets up to look down the basement stairs and sees it bouncing down the final steps.  Now what do we do?  Wait for Gary to home and check things out again.

We both explain to Gary what happening earlier and he has one question – “Why is the butterfly (or hummingbird) net out?”  “So just in case it came out – I was going to try and catch it with the net.”

Gary first decides to check under the couch to make sure there weren’t two of them inside – nope!  Then he starts collecting up all the traps and sets up the two rat traps that I bought on the way home today.  We put different kinds of “treats” in or on the traps – hoping something would fancy its taste buds.  Cheese, peanut butter, pastrami, cat food and dog food.

At bedtime, Heather wants to know if the basement lights are going to be turned off or left on.  I told her what you feel comfortable with – the lights stayed on all night.  Off we all go to bed about 11:00 PM.

1:31 AM, I hear a live trap go off but I don’t hear any other noises.  In the morning when Gary gets up, I tell him that I heard a trap go off at 1:31.  He could not believe that I heard it – SURE DID!  He goes downstairs to check things out and sure enough it was inside.  But he cleaned out three other traps of the treats before it was caught.  He sets the trap outside and as he is leaving for work, he asks me to move the trap so it won’t be in the sun in the afternoon.

I decide to take the trap with me on my way to work and would release it down the mountain.  At the gate of our association, which is a little over a mile away, I set the trap on a rock while a drive the vehicle through the gate and relock it.  I took a picture of our visitor (which now is lost because my computer’s mother board crashed and I lost the picture) and then opened the latches and it didn’t want to leave.  I shook it and moved it around and still didn’t want to leave. 

“I need to get to work and you need to find a new home.  Get out!”  So I moved the trap to the ground, leaving one side open and turned the trap so it fell out.  He slowly moved out into the brush to find its new home.  I had left Heather a note on the kitchen table that it was caught and that I was letting it go on my way to work.

I called Gary later in the day and told him that I let the pack rat go and where.  He said that it wasn’t far enough away.

So life is not boring on the mountain – it may be quiet most of the time, but nature sure gives us some great stories to tell.