I've succombed!

I have been pestered long enough for 'the end' story of the poor pack rat who lived at 1050 apogee way. So if you don't want to be grossed out, please don't read on. (Now I know that you will all read on because you are all just curious and sick enough!)

Let's back up to many weeks ago. We had a propane leak in our house. We could smell it like no other. But it was weird because it wasn't by our appliances or fireplace. We called the gas man to come up at 11 at night to do a pressure check. Bill #1 - $$$$$$$$$ He found nothing.

A few days later it was so strong I thought we all may die and I didn't think we should even stay in the house. I called the gas man again. He came up yet again and did yet another pressure test. Bill #2 - $$$$$$$$ He found nothing. He did mention that perhaps we should check our septic tank. We've only been in our house for not even two years and it's only Paul and I! How in the world could we fill a septic field!

So we called the septic people. Bill #3 - $$$$$$$$ He found nothing. He did mention that perhaps we should bring up a plumber and see what he could find.

We called the plumber. Two of them came up. Bill #4 - $$$$$$$$$ They went all over the house smelling. They put their noses by the drains, by the toilets, by every place imaginable. They could find nothing...................

Then the heat kicked on. It hadn't really been on at all before this. They said, "Hmmmm, the smell seems to be stronger when the heat kicks on." And then Paul had a light bulb come on over his head. We had set rat poison in our crawl space. Yes indeed, the smell we were smelling was a dead rat! Oh so disgusting and so gross. I'm totally creeped out just by remembering it. This was on a Thursday. I had 8 missionaries coming to my house Friday night and a bridal shower on Saturday morning. Our house reeked!

We we had to figure out where it was. So the plumbers opened up one of our heat vents and pulled out gobs of nesting material. Oh my gosh I'm so embarrassed writing this 'outloud'! They opened up another vent - you guessed it - nesting material.

So we called a vent guy to come up with his vacumn and try to suck out the dead rat in my heating vents. Bill #5 $$$$$$$$$$ Didn't have equipment to work in the vents. So the dead rat will now forever be in my heating vent and because we have soft vents, it will embed into it and eventually make a hole and we will have to tear down walls to find it and replace the vents!

I hate pack rats. It's official. I never want to see or for sure smell another one. We did figure out how it got into the crawl space and that's forever fixed.

Here are the lessons we learned that just may come in handy to some of you:

1. Always close the door to the crawl space completely. I had not done this as I was packing out wedding tubs for a wedding I was doing.

2. Pay as many people as much as you have to to figure out what the nasty smell is in your house.

3. Use the product Odor Killer (only available on line and found by others stories on the internet about how they got rid of the smells of dead pack rats in their houses. Paul had typed in google something along the lines of the kind of venting tubes we have and something about smells. He found nothing. I typed in 'Dead pack rats in my heating vents' and it brought up a world of information! Guess this is more common than I thought. There are apparently a lot of rednecks like us who have to figure out things to do with dead animal smells.)

4. Never ever put out rat poison! Only use traps. This would have saved us a world of trouble. I may have suggested this to Paul but I would never give him a bad time about it as I was the one who left the little door open a crack..........On the other hand he should have been helping me get the buckets out and he would have made sure the door was closed!

5. Rats can get thru the smallest of spaces.

6. The smell does eventually go away and we learned the best thing to do was to put a dryer sheet in each vent and it helped immensely.

7. We still love living on the mountain and have chalked this up to a weird story in our family history!

So there is the story. Please don't tell anyone as we may never see another visitor again...........