the rat bastard is pissing me off

You might remember that one of the chores for my grandkids was helping me clean out a rat's nest in the garage.

I've known about it for quite a while, known I would have to move two crates of glass and one of kiln shelves to get to it.  

I have, for weeks now, been yelling at the rat bastard as he gnawed away on my crate, his nest being in the back of the crate next to the adjacent metal shelving unit, banging on the crate with a hammer, shaking the glass around.  

the section of crate the rat destroyed, now flipped over

I can hear him when the door to the garage is open.

I guess he moved in during the winter or early spring.  While the one garage door is propped open enough for the cat to get in while we are in residence, we always close it tight when we are in the city to work.  Which, this year, has been half of every week so the little bastard settled in on the days we were gone.

Since I was disturbing him in his main location, he started building an annex under some metal shelves on another wall.  I swept out the most peculiar things besides the expected acorns and shredded fiber blanket that we use in casting.  

And by sweep, I mean that I took an old broomstick and waved it back and forth underneath the shelving unit pulling out stuff like round and peanut shaped ceramic insulators, plaster fingers (that's a different story), and metal brackets for mini-blinds among other things.

So now that we had cleaned the nests out, we stopped propping the other door up but he was still getting in through the hole in the wall where the wire that powered the old well pump came through because I could hear him gnawing in the garage again. Before we left for the city this week, I nailed a piece of flattened aluminum can over the hole.

When we got back yesterday, I noticed that my aluminum patch was gnawed and torn up and he had started building a new nest. Repeat the sweep under the shelving unit and pulled out all those weird little things again...plaster fingers, ceramic insulators, metal brackets, kiln furniture. The rat bastard had fetched all those things again off the bottom tray of the cart that the kiln sits on where I had put them.

the rat's eclectic collection

Last night I was determined he was not getting in again so I set up a much bigger barrier. Now if he wants in he has to gnaw through 2 pieces of 1/4” glass and about 4” of brick.

an impenetrable barrier

So far so good.

Since he has such a fondness for plaster fingers and kiln furniture, I'll just keep my eye on that stuff and if it disappears again, I'll know he's back.

In the meantime, I'm getting a trap.