RATS

Seriously....Rats. So, here is what happened. We got all moved in the first week of August and mom & I pulled several LONG days getting things unpacked. While we were in the house, I noticed a lot of little bugs. This isn't uncommon in a home that has been vacant for a while, so I wasn't overly concerned but told my dad that his job for the next day was to find a pest control company that could come take care of the bugs. He first called Orkin and got a quote over the phone. I asked him to get another quote so he called Cooks Pest Control and they came out to the house to do an assessment.

While Cooks was here, the man doing the assessment told me he saw evidence of "roof rats" but not to worry because it was fairly common in this area and it was something that was taken care of as part of the normal pest control process so it wouldn't be a problem. I liked him & said sign us up so we signed an agreement with Cooks. He let me know that the technician would be coming on Thursday to spray the house. Great.

Well - Wednesday I got a call from the technician and it went something like this:

me -"hello"
him - "Hello Mrs. McSwain. I'm the Cooks Pest Control man and I just got an order to come service your house."
me - "great..can't wait to see you because we have bugs."
him - "well...I'm calling to tell you that you don't need to have an agreement with us because the homeowner already has one and I've been servicing your house for the past few months."
me - "that's a little concerning to me because I'm seeing a lot of bugs"
him - "I come once a month and it's time for me to come in a few days, so that's probably why. I also understand that you heard about the roof rat droppings"
me - "yes"
him - "we've been working on fixing the problem for a while now. It's actually why the homeowner is trying to sell the house. there have been rats in the attic and in the actual house. They carry disease and the homeowner is so freaked out he won't even live there."
me (after a very long pause) - "WHAT?!?!?!"
him - "you need to get anything you have in the attic out of there immediately because it can get contaminated and the attic doors don't close well so if I were you, I would put some boxes in front of them so the rats can't get into the house."

The rest of the conversation was a total blur as I tried to process what I was hearing. Keep in mind that we had just moved in all of our things the day before and had about 1/2 of the house set up at this point. We had a lot of boxes in the attic and Ryan was in the middle of 2-a-days with football so he was gone all day and coming home around 10pm at night. I immediately went into the house and told my mom that we had to get everything out of the attic. I ran up and down the attic stairs pulling every box I could possibly lift (and even those I shouldn't have) out of the attic all the while my eyes darting around expecting a rat to jump out and get me. I had huge bruises on my legs as battle wounds from the boxes...wish I had gotten a picture.

I put large, heavy boxes outside of all attic doors (there are 4 of them - including 1 in Madison Claire's room). When Ryan got home that night, I lost it. He called Showhomes immediately and what started from there was a string of events that ended up taking about 3 weeks to get resolved. The highlights from those 3 weeks:

*A lot of back and forth between us, Showhomes, the realtor, Cooks, and the homeowner
*New rat droppings discovered in Annie's closet - proof that a rat had been IN the house since we moved in which prompted a very assertive, you need to do something about this immediately, email from me to Showhomes that very same night.
*Gary boarding up all of the attic doors - especially Madison Claire's where we found a hole that a rat had chewed through. He also put these sensors in every room that are supposed to repel rats and we slept with the radio playing throughout the house for a few nights because apparently rats don't like noise. Hey - whatever works!
*Madison Claire sleeping with me & Ryan for 2 weeks because we were afraid for her to be in her room at night (rats are nocturnal)
*A decision that we were moving to another house and not going to stay here which about sent me into post-partum depression at the thought of packing, moving and unpacking a house again so soon when my forearm was still so sore from opening boxes I couldn't even lift a hairdryer
*A lot of worry, prayer, and frustration

At this point - they have patched all of the holes in the roof, fixed all of the attic doors and steam cleaned and sanitized all of the floors in the house so we think the problem is under control. Cooks is continuing to monitor for new droppings and so far there have been none, so we are feeling a like the situation is okay for now. Madison Claire is finally back to napping and sleeping in her room and we have decided to stay in this house unless they find any new droppings at which point we are D-O-N-E, done.

I'm sure one day we will look back on this and laugh at the craziness of it all but right now it is still a little to raw. I'm so thankful that God led us to call Cooks pest control because if we had gone with the initial Orkin quote, we never would have had the full context and back story. Now if we can just find a house to move into permanently - one new thing to add to the list = NO RATS!