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ROUSes and Other Not So Fun Creatures

ROUS is a familiar term around our home. For those of you who do not know sweet Westley, Princess Buttercup and the nasty creatures from the Fire Swamp, I highly recommended renting The Princess Bride immediately!
ROUS or Rodents Of Unusual Size, have from time to time popped into my home to say hello. In case you've forgotten, this lovely place I call home is a seventies modular home that has seen better days.

Let me give you a little glimpse into what I'm dealing with here. When the wind blows, which being from South Dakota is an everyday occurrence, my indoor curtains honest to goodness blow too. The majority of the windows are cracked and or gapping around the frames, so many of the windows are covered in plastic to keep out the cold and the bugs.

The cracks in the siding on the outside of our house tend to let in little and not so little creatures of all kinds. As a result the outside of the house will soon be held together more by the sealant I spray into the cracks every fall than the actual siding.

Despite my best efforts not a month goes by when I haven't caught a mouse or two or seven, ok maybe not seven. But regardless, I often feel like I am fighting a losing battle.

Just in case you think I exaggerate let me tell you, in the five years I have been in this home I have killed/caught/discovered the following inside my house... mice (a million to date)... one rather large, thankfully dead, rat... two, yes two, snakes, and countless flies and spiders.

Outside the home the list is even longer. One rattlesnake, one baby skunk, several raccoons, too many bullsnakes, a muskrat and even on occasion I've had coyotes in my front yard.

What might you ask, is the point of my rather terrifying list of critters? Well currently I have an unidentified ROUS in my attic crawl space. I don't know what it is, but it sounds large and I can often hear it scurrying around. The Hub's put poison in there recently but I am hoping it finds its way out rather than eats the poison and dies up there. Oh the smell, of dead critters! Gross!

A friend suggested it was may be a squirrel, my reaction, "Yes! Please be a cute fluffy squirrel!"

Although I live on a farm and animals are a given, there are some animals I would just rather do without. My hope is that by building new with the next house I will be able to slow down, if not eliminate, the influx of unwanted creepy crawlers!

I hope to be back soon with an update on the ROUS in the attic, and very soon I should have some more exciting news on the new house plans! Thanks for stopping by and let me know what critters you've found in and around your home. Tell me I'm not alone!

PS. The day I find this in my house, I am sooo out :)

Update- The ROUS has passed on to the land of dead critters. Unfortunately it did so in the crawl space where we have no access. So it will forever remain a mystery as to what exactly it was. Now, we wait for the smell to abade and try to find out where it got in in the first place. Oh the joys of home ownership!

 

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