Fondue You

Delicious cheese wrapped Diphacinone balls for my guests

 A somewhat well known restaurant across the alley from my house permanently closed at the end of July. It was a fondue restaurant, so I never tried it. I've never been a fan of fondue. When I go out to eat, it is so somebody else will cook my food. I'm not going to pay a restaurant for the privilege of cooking my own food. Next door to the restaurant was an empty storefront office. Just about the time the fondue place closed, somebody took a lease on the empty office and converted it to a children's pre-school/daycare. Of course they had to gut the interior and make it nice for the little children.

So right across the alley there has been much upheaval and now I have a rat problem. I assume the rats were living in the office building and dining next door at the restaurant's garbage bins. I can see a rat trail come into my yard from that direction and clearly see where they trampled down my wild flower garden to dig burrows under my back porch. I put one of my security cameras under the porch just to get an idea of what was going on. It was much worse than I even imagined. Overnight there was a steady parade of rats. Small rats, medium sized rats, and one giant, supersized rat. The giant rat is at least six inches tall at the shoulders and ten inches long not counting the tail. I ran to the hardware store and bought all sort of rat traps. Sticky boards, snap traps, and poison. I baited the sticky boards and laid them across the rat trail. The rats just turned them over and used them as little bridges. I used peanut butter on the snap trap. The first night the rats ate the peanut butter without triggering the trap. The second night, they broke it. Nothing was caught. I then went on line and bought an electric trap that guaranteed sixty dead rats in no time by electrocution. On my security camera I could see the rats just walk on by my thirty four dollar rat trap. A couple of them even walked right up to the camera and posed in front of it. I also called the City of Chicago. They came out and put poison in the burrows. It was all gone within hours and the burrows were even larger. My last try in the war on rats involves little marble sized balls of poison. The package says the rats will die within five days after eating it. If they eat it. They won't even look at the stuff. So a few days ago I took the little marble sized balls and wrapped them in Kraft singles 'cheese'. The cheese balls were a hit with the rats. They devoured that stuff. For three nights in a row I have served them up and the rats have had a nice cheese and wine party under my porch. I'll give the poison another couple of days, but I better start smelling dead rat soon because my next option will be, sell the house.