House occupant 2

The landlady left me a large display cabinet. It was a bit ropey, but still I was surprised at her generosity. Like everything else, it was going to need a good cleaning, but no problem. The first night, I set up my bed in front of it, not wanting to use the tiny bedrooms, other plans for those.

At about 04:30, when I finally put my head down, I heard an ominous but familiar scurrying sound. Now I know why she left it behind – biatch!

‘Here we go again’, I thought, after all the rat saga of some 18 months ago. The next night, as I was sitting quietly, I caught a glimpse. It was not big, but still too big to be a mouse, so my first thoughts were a rat. So disappointing. I told the landlady and she replied “yes, I know”. I could have ripped her head off right there, but I bit my lip and controlled my temper, after giving a verbal bashing two days ago. I told her that I want that cabinet gone as soon as possible. I will give her a week before I buy me an axe.

Last night, I decided to stakeout the rat for a blip. I lay on the floor, pre focused on the path that the rodent has been seen to follow and waited. After about 30 minutes, I heard a rustling at the kitchen rubbish bin, so I relocated for a shot when it comes out.

These rats are fairly stupid, no amount of stamping was going to disturb it from its garlic feast, as that was all that was in there. I even shouted, to no avail. Eventually it popped out and was gone in a flash and all I got was a blurry rear half, grossly under exposed.

From past experience, I had a plan. If you remove the bin, the rat returns and searches high and low, because he knows he left it here somewhere, it can’t have gone that far. Sure enough, within a few minutes he returned. It was really quite comical to watch the despair. I managed to collect half a dozen useable images, of which I liked this one the best.

Looking at the images, the head shape does not match either a rat or a mouse. It looks more like a shrew, but research will have to wait, as I am sitting on the floor in an internet café and I don’t think my back can take much more.

Update - Asian house shrew.

It's short tail, long snout and small eyes give it away. Nowhere near the problem of a rat, so I may just let it stay after all. It is actually not a rodent, but related to moles.

DAve