30th August

Yesterday, I walked into the bathroom in the way I do most things – thinking of something else, looking at a book in my hand and generally not paying attention. Luckily, something caught my eye before I put down my foot and squished the big, fat rat that was sitting there.

I may have made a slight squealing sound whilst doing a mad hop backwards and closing the door (did I think the rat was going to attack me?!). I definitely did wait a little while before gingerly opening the door again, just in case the rat was going to make a dash for it. I actually expected it to have run behind the bath, which is where they normally live, but it was still sitting by the door.

Was it dead? No, it was definitely breathing. As if to underline the point, it waddled slowly away from me before coming to rest in front of its usual escape hole. It made no move to go through the hole, though, and I realised that it was suffering the effects of the poison it had obviously eaten.

I know poison is hideous, I know it does dreadful things to them and kills them from the inside out in a very long and cruel way, but I was desperate! The glue (another hideous, long, drawn out way to kill something) was completely useless (the mice left footprints as they ran through it) and the rodents simply pushed the traditional mouse traps under the fridge so they could take the food while the cramped space stops the trap from working. I was tempted to let them live, simply for being so ingenious, and I made a deal with them – if they kept out of my bedroom, I would stop planning ways to murder them. But they wouldn’t listen, and I could see the time coming where I would wake up in bed and discover a rodent on my pillow ... I did what I had to do.

So, the poison had obviously been working its magic on this rat, and I was sure it was about to die. I didn’t really want it ot die behind the bath – I’ve done the whole ‘dead rat covered in maggots’ thing before, and it’s not pretty. Having said that, I probably would have been fine getting a dead rat (sans maggots) out of the bathroom, but the fact this one was still moving prompted me call A for help.

He came to my rescue, as he always does, and while H and I hid behind my bedroom door and made squealing sounds every time it sounded like something might be coming towards us, A and G (one of the guard’s sons) scooped the rat up in a bucket and took it outside. G then killed it (quickly) so that it wouldn’t spend the next few days slowly suffering.

I do still feel a bit guilty for the way I am sentencing these animals to a slow, painful death ... but not too guilty, as I slept properly for the first time last night due to the fact there are no rodents crashing round the house!