There’s A Rat In The Kitchen

Little things. These little things, these little bits of animal and insect life. The mosquitoes have not really made the comeback I had anticipated. You keep the plug-ins plugged in and the spray sprayed on, but they have been only a minor nuisance since June. With so much rain around (and it poured again this morning), snails are crawling and silvering their way across the terrace, climbing into the shutter doors, attaching themselves to the legs of the terrace furniture or the garden gates. There is a particular snail-like thing that I don’t quite understand. Just an elliptical shell with barely anything else. It lies around and gets crunched underfoot.

And then there are frogs or probably they are toads. Just small mites, they hop in for a bit, get some tangle dust caught on their legs and then hop out again. They are also, I suppose, a thing of the wetness, a friendly amphibian to replace the friendly reptilian lizard. Today it became actually quite cool, cool enough for a touch of heating. And when the weather turns, the most ominous thing to look out for is the rat. There was once one in the kitchen. Stood in the middle of the floor. I managed to get into the back utility room, where it hid behind the washing machine. There was me, hitting the machine with a broom, trying to shift the damn thing, which I did. It lunged at me. I’d never had a rat lunge before. But eventually I chased it out, Nora-Batty style with the broom, and it scurried off into the undergrowth and ivy.

The problem with these little things though, these toads, these snails, is that they get destroyed. Crushed, or maybe even, in the case of toads get caught by a cat (I don’t know, do cats chase toads?). And once crushed, they become a meal. Ants. Ants are the real little sods. You never know where they are going to appear, so you are chasing around with a large can of Zum exoceting them into oblivion, and then some other battalion of the ant army pitches up because a small toad’s been left dead outside the front door.

These little things. These little bits of wildlife. These little bits of Mallorca.


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