What Katie did next... The pest control man says I don’t have rats in the roof, but squirrels – and they’re much worse!
After moving to rural Somerset, Katie Glass gets to grips with creature discomforts
Everyone warns you about pests when you move to the countryside. All my friends have fun stories they like to delight me with about rat-infested barns, mouse-plagued cottages and giant infestations of spiders. Still, I wasn’t too worried. You can’t move to somewhere surrounded by fields and not expect to see wildlife. In my rose-tinted vision of myself in the country, I imagined myself frolicking around like Snow White, chatting to field mice and making friends with weasels. Besides, whatever the countryside had in store for me it couldn’t be as bad as the horrors I’d seen in London.
In the city they say you’re never more than six feet away from a rat. Six feet would have been a blessing – usually, they lived in my flat. Every place I rented in the city had a rodent problem. In some ancient buildings there were dynasties of mice who’d been living there longer than any of us renting had.
My worst rodent experience was when I lived in east London, in a crumbling derelict pub with eight other people. The night I moved in, I was kept awake by a terrible gnawing coming from under my bed. “Do we have rats?” I squeaked to my flatmate, rigid with fear in the dark.
“It’s only mice,” he reassured me, lying through his teeth. Since that moment, I have slept with the lights and radio on, a habit I’ve never got rid of.
In my Dalston flat, I contended with endless pests. Rats brazenly hung around on street corners waiting for me to put the rubbish out, casually tucking into dinner on the pavement. My old Georgian flat was a magnet for mice, made worse by a street full of neighbours constantly doing building work – every time some scaffolding went up, my little furry flatmates reappeared. Meanwhile, the London foxes would shamelessly lounge on my balcony in the sun, like beautiful silky ginger cats.
In London I was surrounded by little furry animals but oddly since moving to Somerset, I’ve hardly seen them. Here the animals I see are mostly livestock and pets: horses, sheep, cows, dogs and pheasants running into the roads on apparent suicide attempts. Since moving into my cottage, I’ve not even seen a fox. Perhaps they’re not interested in me because I haven’t got chickens yet.
Even bats, which my survey suggested sometimes flew through my attic, have never appeared. I’d been looking forward to seeing them. They remind me of Wales when my dad would pluck them down from the eaves and show me their little furry faces to teach me not to be afraid.
My survey also warned me that because my cottage is close to a farm, I should be conscious of rodents. Still, for the first few weeks – despite the cold and the storms – there is no sign of anything stirring. “It’s probably too cold for them in here,” Martin shivers from my sofa. “Besides, you’ve never got anything decent to eat in.”
Then, I wake up one morning to what sounds like a family that has moved in over my head, or what could be one of those morning sober raves. For a moment, I could be back in Dalston.
The roof man – busy fixing the gableended straps – suggests it’s field mice playing. It sounds more like a dog on a trampoline.
Initially, I am nervous to involve pest control. I worry that in the countryside its tactics are too vicious. When Laila got a rat in her caravan, a man offered to come down with his air rifle and shoot it. In a cottage I once rented in rural
In London I was surrounded by small furry animals, but out here I’ve hardly seen them
Sussex, with a garden overrun by rabbits, a man in the pub offered to help out, casually saying: “I’ll come down with my ferrets.” It took me a minute to realise what he meant before I begged him not to visit.
I take the ultrasonic rodent-repelling plug-in that I had in my caravan and relocate it to my bedroom. A friend visiting the house spots it and complains it’s giving her headaches (clearly I’m not sensitive enough). I cover the kitchen in potted mint plants (an old housewives’ trick) and douse my bedroom with mint oil, so it stinks of toothpaste. The banging above me continues.
I google solutions. The two main solutions people seem to recommend are getting a gun or a cat. I try to picture myself on a rocking chair with an air rifle. Instead, I try to make friends with the local feral cats.
In the end, I call the pest control man. He arrives looking nothing like the pale Rentokil men I met in London, with greasy hair and sad eyes. Instead he is a cheerful tweedy gentleman who turns up accompanied by two little terriers wearing yellow fluorescent jackets.
“Do you make tea?” he asks, popping himself down at my kitchen table while his dogs head off on an inspection of my house: sniffing in corners, inspecting the drains, trying to establish the cause of the problem.
Stringerbelle, who has never seen a dog at work in her life, follows them around trying to pester them into playing. They are too focused on their mission to be distracted.
Eventually, they head up to my bedroom followed by the pest control man, who disappears into the attic. I don’t ask what he does while he is up there. I feel too guilty to hear the details.
Still, the banging continues. I lie in bed wondering who is now living above me, and when they moved in. I picture what movements might go with the sounds and imagine mice up in my attic playing It’s a Royal Knockout, swinging from the beams. I guiltily wait to hear a trap go off, secretly wishing it would.
After weeks, the noise continues. The pest control man returns. He looks back up in the attic and asks for more details. Yes, the sound is mostly in the morning. Yes, there’s scurrying, scampering and chewing.
“Could be squirrels?” he asks. Squirrels! What a relief – how adorable, I think. “Oh no, squirrels are much worse,” he says.