Before leaving, it looked up at me. I screamed, the rat screamed and the pair of us fled in different directions.
Mr Grigg wouldn’t believe it until he went to put his beach towel away in the airing cupboard and saw the shelves were littered with droppings the length of Panama. And my great aunt’s lace – made by fallen women she was looking after at the turn of the 19th century – lay in tatters.
We had a rat infestation, as we discovered when we switched on the central heating and the boiler wouldn’t work. Bits of towel, sheets and great aunt’s lace had been used to fashion a rather comfortable nest inside the boiler, from which Mother Rat had multiplied in biblical proportions.
So, faced with this horrible situation, who you gonna call? We dialled R for Rat and got Clive from West Dorset District Council’s pest control department. He arrived in record time, after hearing a tale of woe that there was a woman near Beaminster who was perched on a chair and refusing to use the only lavatory in the house.
I was rather disappointed by his vehicle’s livery – a boring WDDC logo rather than a giant rat or a humungous cockroach sitting on the van roof like in the film Men in Black – but, overall, I was delighted.
Clive was brilliant, attentive, helpful and funny. Especially when he opened the airing cupboard and a young rat popped its head up among the duvet covers to say hello.
Clive the Rat Man squealed, and dropped the trap on the utility room floor as he slammed the airing cupboard door shut.
‘I hate rats,’ he said.
All those years in pest control and he still hadn’t got used to it. Priceless.
As is the service provided by the council, at a time when other local authorities have scrapped their pest control deaprtments. Yes, you have to pay for it, but at a small fraction of the money you’d be handing over to a private firm.
I’m the first to criticise poor service but in this case, credit where credit’s due. So a big round of applause to Clive please, the hero of the hour.
Wonder what he’d be like, though, with the capybara down the road..?
Related posts:
- Lush Places: a shaggy dog story In Lush Places, the village square is full of tradesmen’s...
- Lush Places: Blue is the colour On Bluebell Hill, overlooking Lush Places, the colours are so intense...
- Lush Places: Careful with that strimmer, Eugene IN LUSH Places, there is a burst of collective expletives...
- Lush Places: Political unrest in Dorset’s rural hinterland WAR has been declared in my village, where political posters...
- Lush Places: a game of two halves The bunting has disappeared from Lush Places, apart from the...
