Rat attack

In the many years that I was in the corporate sector,I have met a number of rats in the eternal rat race that work life is in the big bad world of business.Some have outsmarted me and others have been killed in the bargain,so its natural that I had it all figured out.I knew every trick in the book to deal with rats of all kinds.Except that in the rodent world of survival,the odd are against the rat and therefore the innovation and expertise they bring into their range of survival skills is not something that can be taught in any business school.

For the last few months we have been plagued by a family of rats who believe it is their right to invade out kitchen.Much like the toys in children's books who come alive after midnight,the rats in our area come into the kitchen the moment we switch off the lights and go to bed.Now we take pains to hide all foodstuffs,clean the kitchen remove all dirty dishes etc etc but the rat comes in,knocks a few things down,scampers over all the kitchen exploring things and when it gets tired,it climbs up the chimney to the loft and goes to sleep.Our first course of action was to trap them but having failed to gather courage to deal with their killing we had to rat proof the kitchen.It started with closing the windows of the kitchen,then they came in through the dining room so now we spend half an hour ever evening closing all the windows (and in the process dying of heat and humidity in the house).We invested in good wire mesh and sealed all possible entry points to and from the kitchen.We now find that the rat has decide that the balcony is his new home so the next step is to close those windows too.Funny how our conversations are all rat centered,we have become obsessed with the rat population in this area.Our lives revolve around the rat.The husband and I no longer fight about anything but the rat and how foolproof the husbands efforts have been in restricting entry into the house.My friends with similar problems discuss new ways of outsmarting the rat.It is an insult to our intelligence that this creature who is well below us in the evolution chain,can cause such fear,heartache and disgust in out lives.Strange.....I am beginning to think those corporate rats were a harmless lot after all