Inconsiderate Downstairs Neighbors and Water Damage

Image Credit: Creative Commons, mollyjolly

Not my property, alas. That barn is goals though. 

The other night, I was sitting in my dark living room when I heard a rustling noise coming from the window

I stood up and saw a dark shape in the window. I peered at it. Surely that wasn't a...

It was.

There was a RAT in our hurricane shutters.

Image Credit: Me! While freaking out a little. 

Apparently, the little squeaker decided to go exploring and got himself stuck. We turned on the lights and snapped a picture.

He eventually figured a way out and returned to his compatriots under the house.

We've known that there's a rat colony under our house for awhile now. We've been hearing rustling, scratching, and banging noises all winter, and just recently started putting rat poison under the house.

The rustling has gone down somewhat, so we figured the poison was finally taking effect.

We started noticing a new, persistent noise that sounded like a toilet tank refilling coming from the vents. Chris figured it was a water heater pressure valve that needed replacing, and we ordered the part. Sort of annoying and possibly indicative of needing a new tank soon, but nothing we couldn't handle.

This afternoon, I noticed a large puddle by the back corner of the house. 

Turns out, the noise we were hearing was a persistent water leak. Said water leak has pretty much destroyed huge amounts of insulation under our pre-fabricated home as well as endangered the duct work for the central AC system. It's going to take a lot of time and effort to fix-- I'm trying not to think about the money. 

We immediately turned the water to the house off, and I got supper ready and navigated cleanup and the kids' bedtime routine without running water while my husband braved the muddy, wet underbelly of the house in 50 something degree weather to locate and fix the leak. He brought the damaged section of pipe inside to show me. 

Image Credit: Chris Hess (Used with permission)

The link was caused by rats chewing on the water lines. The teeth marks are clearly visible on the pipes, and there's a clear 'highway' in the insulation under the house where they've been moving around. My heroic husband managed to fix the leak that was causing most of the damage, but noticed that there's at least one more leak that will entail going back to the hardware store to get more parts to fix (not to mention replacement insulation for the floor and the duct work). So we're currently keeping the water off. We turned it on to do the dishes and take a shower then turned it off again, and we'll keep doing that until we can get the leak fixed.

At this point, I gotta say, these little interlopers are just being rude.

We're going to launch a renewed campaign to serve an eviction notice to the little gremlins, and night prayers tonight included prayers to St. Patrick to send us some snakes (rat snakes, not the poisonous kind). 

This ends here.

Image Credit: Giphy

Yippee-kai-yay, mother squeakers. 

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