280. Attic life

 The flying ants or crawling flies have not come back. The boiling kettle - cruel but eco-friendly - has done the trick. Yet some racket is still going on at night. I do not want to bring the matter up as I do not want an other crisis: me having to search the Internet for hours and Baby insisting on sleeping on the downstairs floor. 

'Did you sleep well?' She asks with an accusing tone the second morning of our pastoral holiday.

'I did.' I lie shamefully.

I love sleeping here. I leave the windows wide open to let the cool air come in and I can see the trees in the moonlight. True, last night there was a lot of noises I could not identify.

'I didn't.' Baby tells me. She definitely sounds a little annoyed.

'There was some kind of race going on up there in the attic. Some kind of animals running around. They sound as if they run up the chimneys and thought the gutters. What a racket!'

I did not say anything. Personally I thought the animals were having a big party, dancing till late into the hot summer night. As Baby did not mention not wanting to sleep in her room and was not making a fuss I said nothing. She did not go on about the animals not finding their ways to the race course (our attic) and ending up in her bed. Which, honestly, was my big worry.

'We need to get rid of them.' This sounded like an order. 

So I was back on the Internet. This time it was a little more difficult. I was typing sentences like: how to make small noisy animals leave the attic in an eco-friendly way. I couldn't imagine myself chasing them with a kettle of boiling water. And how could I know which animals were dancing or doing press-ups up there at night?

I found out that many animals could have set up house in my attic! Some could be protected (no boiling water then), some hated noise and a radio could be left on full blast (no sleep for us then) and others were useful and had to be encouraged because they chased and killed others (could I tolerate cruel battles in my attic, leading to certain deaths?).

I sat there, puzzled, unable to make a decision.

'Let's take the dog upstairs!'

I stared at her, genius child of mine. Of course, Ralph, our dog would be the hero of the day.  

We called the dog who was having a snooze in the garden. He lifted his head, looked at us as if to say 'No, I'm not chasing rats. I am not a cat.' 

Once in the house he could smell a rat if I may say so. He was never allowed upstairs, not even in this house (big mistake?) and now we were encouraging him to go up not one but two flights of stairs! Something fishy was going on and he was resisting. We convinced him  using an unreasonable quantity of fresh crusty bread and Cantal cheese. We got my husband to contribute (back from the croissants run which here takes a while) and the three of us spent fifteen minutes in the attic shouting with faked enthusiasm 'Cat! Cat!' and praising for randomly sniffing around 'Good dog! Good dog!'.

This was a wonderful, cruelty-free, eco-friendly, whole-family bonding experience.