Inspired by Jenny's blog...

My Sonlight E-friend, Jenny, and her husband are serving in South Africa. Their blog is here. Recently she had shared with us some problem they were having with a rat. Then she blogged about it.

I read this to Jeff and he said, "speaking of which, I need to go check all our traps...."

The day I'd found gnawed spots on the potatoes, I picked out the damaged spuds and put the rest in the fridge. The damaged parts were cut off, and I boiled them. Years ago I would have thrown them away, but I'd recently been listening to a retired gentleman tell stories of the food eaten while in prison camp in Vietnam. We ate the spuds.

Then Jeff put out traps for me, and went hunting. He discovered that much of the wiring he installed last summer was chewed, as was the bathroom vents he'd installed just a few months ago. He replaced and repaired. There were trails all through the insulation up there in the attic, too.

Then there was the day I went out to get into my 5 gallon buckets of rice, flour, oatmeal... the flour had been emptied in November and was still empty. The rice bucket had very small gnaw marks at the top-- but the oatmeal bucket was gnawed so far that you could actually see through it a little bit!!! GROSS!!!! There was also scat here and there. NASTY. SO, I got a vacuum and sucked up all the plastic shreds, and then I got disinfectant wipes and thoroughly wiped down the outside of the bucket. Then I waited for DH to get home. He carefully pried the lid off, and inspected the contents- the bucket was nearly full. The contents seemed undisturbed, yet we carefully removed the top inch or two of oats and set them aside for the chickens. The rest of the oats went into a new container.

Think we're ready for missions work yet?

I don't know what I'd do if Jeff weren't willing to go up in that attic. My skin crawls just thinking about it. He proudly held up a catch in the trap one day and I SCREAMED. Like a scared little girl. Haha.