Exterminator Finishes and Leaves; Episode Closed

After the supervisor closed the hole, the noise never did start again. After about 4 days, the exterminator visited one last time to pick up the traps and close the case. EEK! He found a rat in one of the traps! After almost 2 months and 10 visits that included 3 whole-house searches...one rat!

A few days later, no new activity; and they did take the traps and close the case. The nights are quiet, except for my mind, which jumps and waits silently for more each time I hear the tiniest noise.

We'll never know what really happened in the attic and subfloor! Such are the mysteries of life.

Nevertheless, we are minus one pest. Downsized!

Eureka Was Premature But Maybe Now...

That night I heard the rampaging rat, the squirrel soccer team, or whatever was up above my ceiling again. It bangs and clangs and pads and saws! It's directly above my home office. Sometimes it sounds like it's sawing a large piece of wood. Sometimes it seems to be picking up a small piece of wood or a screw and throwing it around. It runs from the office to the laundry room and to the guest bath. Banging on the ceiling directly below it doesn't phase it any more, though this move was followed by a long silence the first time. Sometimes it seems to be twanging wires, playing our electrical system like a guitar. And sometimes I can hear it dig into the wood of the house with it's teeth and pull a little piece off.

After a couple of nights of this, I called the exterminating company and demanded a supervisor. He spent several hours, all over the house. He found another hole under the shingles on a back gutter. He set various traps in the subfloor. It has been quiet...for one night.

Waiting to downsize this animal and again hoping it's done.

Eureka!

I think I found the hole where the animal(s) is(are) getting in. At about noon, there was much noise above my head in the attic. I'm thinking squirrel, bringing in a walnut, dropping it on the sheetrock above my head, rolling it around some...just because it's round. Then twanging some wires. Then running across the floor (my ceiling) and climbing around in the fixtures over the laundry room, picking up small pieces of wood along the way and dropping them. Or maybe it was trying to drag a long stick through the attic and the stick was getting hung up among wires, boards, and detritus along the way.

I couldn't just sit there and not try to do something. So I went into the attics...again. The guys I pay don't seem to be getting the job done. But it's my house and someone has to do it! I wore neoprene gloves this time so I wouldn't quail at going where I knew I needed to go - among the insulation. I went as far toward the slanted-roof edges inside the 2 attics as I could.

I found a tiny hole that has been gnawed in the tippy tip of a bay-window angle way up high in the top attic, but it's very small. Then, in the lower attic, closer to where I have been hearing the activity, I found shavings that look like a nest. This is next to an edge where the slanted roof meets the gutter. When you look from inside the attic, you can't see the whole nest; because the floor of the attic is double, and you can't see the lower part. All I could see of the nest was a few inches of what looks like shavings, but it was enough. I could see a place directly above it on the particle-board ceiling where the gnawing had occurred.

This wouldn't explain all the gnawing sounds like a huge saw that I have been hearing above my office, but it is a start. Because outside, from a ladder, I found a big area right near that attic space where the shingles are easy to lift and the wood is either rotted or gnawed out. I think that's at least one place where animals are passing. The exterminator will be here tomorrow.