22 Foxhole East

kerri_gt

We also had a Dave many years ago when we lived in a shared house. It was an old Victorian house with the bathroom downstairs badly tacked on to the kitchen. The garden opened on to the back of an industrial estate and the LL was a money grabbing a@!e who did the bare minimum and even less to the house (we were still living with mice under the bath by the time we moved out).

The Dave who set up residence was flipping huge (think size of a not so tiny kitten) LL did get someone out to introduce Dave to his maker. Unfortunately Dave expired under the floorboards and created quite a whiff that no one seemed to want to do anything about. 🤢 it was grim.

f0xh0les

Yep, no poison for underfloor Daves!!  I would end up lifting every floorboard to find the pong.

VintageHistorian

We thought we had a Dave in the loft a few years ago, turned out to be a bird. But before that we had someone come out to put down traps and poison (we're not very friendly when things come into our house) and he mentioned that mice are easy to catch because they're very stupid and follow their nose. As long as you bait traps with something that smells good they'll fall for it pretty easily.

Daves on the other hand are much smarter and a lot more suspicious. They also have good memories so if you put down a trap then they recognise it as a change in their area and so won't go near it for several days. They're much harder to catch and remove as a result. You might find you're going to need a whole bunch of traps put in various places around the house before you finally manage to catch him, if you're just moving one or two traps around the place then you don't have the consistancy that means they become less suspicious of what's been put down.

f0xh0les

I knew Daves were neo-phobes (they dislike anything new or things that have been disturbed) and I am getting another £10 of survey cashouts this week, so  that  can go on another  free-to-me  'holiday chalet' on the F0xh0les Peninsula  Campsite for wayward rodents.

It is a proper  top closing door one, I read about the traps that can catch multiple rats, but also read about the second rat deliberately freeing the first one when they worked out how the tilt door worked   Funny little bugg3rs. 

Hopefully my cleaning, clearing, and recycling frenzy is stressing it out enough to make it consider relocating.  Maybe it will call Kirsty and Phil?

Jellytotts

A friend knew she had a Dave in her house (conservatory) after finding it nibbling on the bird seed she kept in there, she managed to shoo it out and popped all the bird seed into rat proof containers.  A few days later she found Dave sitting on the middle of her daughters bed in the middle of the day and decided that "shoo'ing" wasn't going to work. They ended up moving in with a relative whilst the Dave detectives went in.  They caught 17 of them.

Theres never just one.

f0xh0les

 🤢🤢🤢  Don't tell me that!!

Liverpool_Anne

They are rarely alone, it is estimated that 1 male and 1 female can produce 15,000 offspring in a year due to their phenomenal reproductive rate. They carry disease and like squirrels can do serious damage to the fabric of a building. Sorry but I think Mr Foxholes needs to take this a bit more seriously. It is not an escaped pet it is/ they are sewer Daves.
Take care everyone

f0xh0les

Well, before 11am I had cleaned all 3 kids bedrooms and hoovered them, stolen back the mugs and glasses that are not allowed in the bedrooms. Cleaned and hoovered my room, lined the drawers of my dresser with pretty paper, and added nice smelling bars of soap, and put all my clothes away nicely.  Cleaned two bathrooms, put 3 storeys worth of bins out, did all the recycling, audited the bathroom cupboard supplies, made a list (checked it twice!), fixed the polo on the living room curtain draw-string,  that pops off every 6 months,  so I could open curtain #2, sorted GCSE  revision books for DS3 over 5 subjects from older brothers' bedrooms, and have sorted my make up and jewellery (tiny amount) that needs cleaning or throwing out, or charity shopping.

On with the quest!  But I deserve a cup of tea, and I need to make sure that I do not get sofa'd for the rest of the day, I will keep on while I am motivated.   Happy Tuesday folks!

f0xh0les

Carried on, did all the postal-survey admin, walked down to Herr Ron to get sausage rolls for kids' lunchboxes (round trip 5km) in the sunshine, the bird bath did not thaw out today at all. Brrr!! Hoovered  the rest of the house, cleaned and cleared the living room, realised two radiators had stopped working, did 3 loads of laundry and they are on the line, reheated DS4s food tech 'meal' of spiced rice (honestly???)  properly for supper and eeked it out a bit further with garlic peppers and corn on the cob.  Leftover crumble from yesterday's housewifely efforts and ice cream for pud.  Nobody complained.

DH has just run around the house bleeding radiators and the living room is actually warm - but I do also have a million candles on the go, just to top it up.

As long as I do not come down with some kind of lurgy tomorrow, then the house should be looking a heck of a lot better by  tomorrow night than it has done in a long time.

f0xh0les

In other, other news, I still have unexpected and unexplained money left over from February's Week 1 budget - today I should be taking out £100 to do until next Wednesday, but I have enough money left over to buy both kids' bus passes (£35 in total) and have nearly £6 worth of shrapnel in my purse.  I do need fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and some milk though,  so maybe I will toddle off and buy some of those tomorrow. I am going to see if I can stretch the budget until Friday instead.  I have ys 20p crumpets for their breakfasts, spring rolls and gyoza and noodles for their supper tomorrow,  I need to use up more 20p field mushrooms from Lee Del, so might make soup for lunch tomorrow

The small amount of shopping I have done this week included a 3kg tub of  vegan baking margarine (£3.40), which is really handy for making pastry, biscuits, and crumble toppings (and my hips expand exponentially )

Oh, and someone gave me a 2kg bag (unopened) of organic roasted hazelnuts because they were out of date - by two days ...... ??? Some people!!  I mean she never even considered trying to tame a squirrel with them!  I dunno.  Disturbing lack of imagination.