Yesterday, our dog was going mad around the bin in the corner of the garage and out of the corner of my eye I spotted a mouse running across the floor. From time to time, the mice will come into our garage, lured in by my sacks of chicken feed that are stored on a pallet. I usually keep mouse traps set around these sacks of food to stop the invasion but don’t ever seem to be troubled during the summer months so I decided to power up my home grown electric rat trap (since it kills mice too) rather than hunt around for the mouse traps.

This morning, everything was going well. I’d had an early night for a change and woke up feeling refreshed. I had made a cup of tea and after letting the ducks out, had one of those rare moments. I had 5 minutes to spare and my tea was just the right temperature. What a perfect start to the day, I headed out to the garage where I keep my chick and duckling rearing boxes with a spring in my step.

As I went into the garage, I noticed the electric trap was flashing – oh great I thought, I’ve even caught that mouse but I had a bit of a shock… I picked up the trap to have a large tail brush against my hand, this wasn’t a mouse it was a RAT!

I nearly dropped the trap. This is a whole new ball game now and I’m going to have to be really careful, especially with chicks around. It’s time to go and check the rat poison that I have in a bait box behind one of the compost bins.