The Perils of Paradise

Several years ago, as part of a kitchen remodel, we opted to add skylights around the house as a way of reducing the mildew that appears to be the karmic revenge toward those who live near the ocean. As soon as construction began, however, the contractor pointed out that we had termites.

So we got the termite guy out, who wanted to tent us — except that first, he said, we had to get rid of the ­rats.

That we might have attic occupants of the rodent persuasion was no surprise. It ­wasn’t long after ­we’d moved here that I learned that, while the little furry fauna are prevalent all over our county (like the rest of us, they came for the weather), they are happiest to eschew the slimmer pickings of less landscaped areas of the city for the dense protective foliage and abundant food supply in places like La ­Jolla.

Our personal rat population prefers to summer in close proximity to our orange tree, inconsiderately leaving orange rinds on the grass — but worse, having the poor manners to skitter across the patio just as we and our guests are sitting down to an elegant outdoor dinner. One can only glare at them and hiss, “Do you mind? ­We’re trying to have a classy meal here!” (Lobbing a few cans of Rat-Be-Gone into the ivy in retaliation the next morning is not unheard of.)

Rats, fortunately, ­don’t want to come into the living quarters of your house (well, most of the time, anyway), but once the harsh California winter temperatures plummet into the 60s, a rat family — Mom, Dad, the kids — moves in to winter in ­one’s toasty attic, making comfy nests out of your insulation and dining on escargot (aka the snails that feed on your daisies). The La Jolla Chamber of Commerce never ever mentions the R ­word.

Even the county of San Diego carefully disguises its e-rat-ication campaign on your tax bill under the heading of “Vector Control.” Of course, the vectors are disease vectors — in the case of rodentia, typhus, and bubonic plague and, most recently, hantavirus. Nothing you want to get. Let us be clear that the county ­isn’t going to come out and bag them for you, but they excel at showing you how you can smite the little furballs ­yourself.

In fairness, and in anticipation of becoming a persona non rat-a with my fellow La Jollans, let me state that while virtually all of the homes in La Jolla have at least a modest exterior rat presence, some houses are more prone to be rat havens than others. My 1947 built-by-the-lowest-bidder-after-the-war cottage is one of them. And some years are much worse rat years than others, for reasons ­I’ve never been able to ­ascertain.

One such year, in my single-parent days, I heard the familiar scurrying in my attic, and worse, the gnawing. If ­there’s one sound I hate, ­it’s gnawing. Lying awake at 3 a.m., I was consumed with curiosity. “What are they eating up ­there?”

Of course, what I feared was that it was my wiring, but it definitely had more of a beam-ish sound. Maybe it was actually the termites having a giant orgy? (In addition to being a rat Xanadu, my tiny cedar house with its ancient wood shake roof is the termite equivalent of 72 virgins.)

But that winter, listening to the relentless overhead chewing that I feared was devouring the investment I had sold myself into perpetual penury to buy during my divorce, I decided it was time to bring in the ­professionals.

A very nice gentlemen from a local pest control firm duly arrived at my home the next afternoon and installed live-capture traps throughout my attic and in the abundant foliage around the house, with promises that he would be back daily to check on them. It was all very humane, he ­explained.

“So, what do you do with them after you catch them?” I asked, immediately regretting the ­question.

“Oh,” he said, “we drive them out to the country and let them go.” He actually said this with a straight face. Unfortunately, he looked as if ­he’d had a supporting role in Terminator and that the back of his truck was filled with devices I ­didn’t want to know about. I was starting to feel bad for the ­rats.

That is until about five of them were captured in the yard in four days, never mind the few in the attic. I had to be home every day for the pest control guy to get into my attic crawl space, which ­wasn’t easy with work and carpool schedules. Plus, daily rat service was seriously costing me. Being newly re-entered to the workforce and earning just above minimum wage, it became clear this was going to have to be a Kill-It-Yourself ­project.

There ­wasn’t much Internet to speak of 18 years ago when my local hardware gave me a hot tip about the county vector control program. But, happy to see My Tax Dollars at Work, I gave them a call, expecting some big burly rodent-hating club-wielding guy to show up. You can imagine my surprise when this sweet, young, very petite, long-blonde-haired thing named Liz appeared at my door. A more fearless human I have never ­met.

Climbing up her ladder to the cover of my attic crawl space, she gave the cover several sharp knocks. “I always like to alert them ­I’m coming in,” she smiled. “Simple courtesy. I also ­don’t like rats falling on my ­head.”

This was a concept on which we could agree. We systematically walked around my house, she showing me all the places that rats could get in and ways I could thwart them. An Amazing-but-True rat fact is that they can squish their little bodies through a half-inch high ­space.

Outside, Liz explained that my woodpile and the dense ivy over my fence were Ratopias, my prolific orange tree a veritable rat Whole Foods. She instructed me to go to the hardware store and get them to cut a number of pieces of 3/4-inch diameter PVC pipe into 18- to 24-inch lengths, into the middle of which I would insert rat poison (so it would not be accessible to any neighborhood cats). These were duly placed around the ­property.

The tricky part was the attic. I ­didn’t really want to trap live rats, since I had no idea what ­I’d then do with them. (Well, there was that one neighbor….) I ­didn’t really want to trap for dead rats either, but that appeared to be the only other ­alternative.

For those ­who’ve never seen a rat trap, think mouse trap on steroids, with a snap bar that will easily break every one of your fingers. My livelihood as a clerical worker at the time was dependent on those ­fingers.

Liz suggested that I bait the traps and set the springs in the hallway bathroom below and then tiptoe up my rickety ladder ever so carefully and set them “very, very” gently just inside my attic crawl space. Trust me, I would never have attempted this without her cheerleader ­support.

For the record, a ­rat’s cuisine of choice is not cheese, as one might suspect, but peanut butter — a little-known fact that you might use the next time ­you’re at a dinner party and the conversation lags. In fact, for years after ­Liz’s visit, our refrigerator featured two jars of peanut butter, one labeled “For Kids” and the other “For Rats.”

Normally, I ­wouldn’t confess that there were times I was so irked at the kids for one transgression or another that I was tempted to put the rat-trap knife in their jar…but the statute of limitations has passed. Anyway, by the time Liz was done, I was, as my engineer second husband would say, “Fully rat ­capable.”