FC of PFHQ vs. the RATS of NIMH

I have a barn.

It's really a shed.
No, wait ... it's really a "Hey, where are we going to put this? I know just put it in the barn."

That's a more accurate name, but like deoxyribonucleic acid, it's kind of long and awkward, so ... "barn" seems to work just fine.

The barn is 12' x 16', with a loft and a concrete floor. From the ground up, we built it in 1989 from a Popular Mechanics plan.

I had never built anything bigger than a squirrel cage at the time, so it always had a few cosmetic flaws, but it has served us well.
So well that we have neglected it and the barn deserves some TLC soon.

But back to the point of this story ...

Yesterday, I decided to organize it so that I could actually use it as a wood shop



When I moved a stack of lumber, I found this.
It's a huge multi-generational rat nest.
I knew I had a rat problem because several tools had been ruined by chewed wires.

I had no idea I was running a rat condo.

I took a few of the usual steps.

A while back, I put out some D-Con mouse poison and a rat trap, but both had ... disappeared.

Odd.



The workbench above the nest is 8 feet long and the shelf you see is about 3 feet wide.



When the lumber stack was removed, I could finally shove the heavy workbench out away from the wall.



The nest completely filled the space beneath the workbench.

When I say filled, I mean FILLED.

What astounded me was the variety of stuff that the rats had moved from across the barn and into their nest.
PVC fittings, screwdrivers. metal wrenches, all manner of bubble packed hardware that I had hung on the rafters above the workbench, fatwood kindling from the kindling buckets, charcoal,  ... you name it and it was there.

I kept finding things that I had repurchased and now I knew I wasn't crazy at the time when I thought, " I know I have one of these somewhere."

THEY WERE ALL IN THE RAT NEST!

Arrrgghhh.



There were horrible things in the nest too.

My timidly shaky finger is only that close for a size reference.
I do snakes, sharks, and gators.
I don't do spiders.
... shudder ...

If you go up to the picture before the  ... shudder ... spider ... shudder ..., you can see the missing rat trap in the nest.

They made it part of their nest ... but ... first, THEY DISARMED IT!

Are you kidding me?

In the picture above, I have the killing bar pulled back.
Notice that the latch that keeps the killing bar barely held down when you cock the trap is gone.
The two holes at the tail end of the cat picture are where it used to attach.

Oh, and I found the dust mask I wish I could have worn while I cleaned this mess

Yup, part of the nest ... as was the "D-Con" rat poison bait package.

More evidence for the NIMH connection ... outside, behind the barn, an armadillo had dug a burrow beneath the concrete slab and pushed dirt up against the bottom edge of the T-111 wood siding, causing it to rot, which made entry that much easier for the rats of NIMH.

Obviously, the rats planned that and no doubt encouraged the hapless armadillo to do the heavy lifting.

Evil geniuses.

We aren't dealing with normal rats here.


Oh they looked normal when they ran in and out the hole in the back wall of the barn.

But, I know better.   In the tight confines of the barn with a concrete floor, real firepower was not the answer to a rat scurrying in and out as you destroy their nest.   I am temporarily between bb/pellet guns, but the third time she ran back in, I remembered my high power, surgical tubing sling shot hanging on the opposite wall.   This would be an easy shot. I turned and reached up to take down the sling shot and steel ball ammo off the shelf.   The bands were gone ... chewed to pieces.   I have just one thing to say about that. One word.   Well, it's an acronym technically, not a word, but let's not quibble over semantics at a time like this...  

NIMH