Vermin

I bought my first house in 1975 and for 35 years have been the mistress of my own domain. Aside from the positive emotional aspects that owning your own home brings you, there are undeniable practical advantages, chief among them being you are not at someone else’s mercy when something goes wrong.

Hubby and I own rental property in Cape Town and we have always tried to be the kind of landlord we would hope to have, should we ever have the misfortune to be renters. Well…the misfortune happened in January and, unfortunately, we did not end up with a landlord like us.

We are renting a relatively new (less than ten years old) house in what is known around here as a “posh” suburb. I don’t know about you, but there are certain things I automatically assume in such areas, among them a relatively high degree of safety and security, cleanliness, privacy, civility, and well-kept properties. These are things I am willing to pay a higher rent to have…and in my rental house, I do. Problem is, I’m not getting what I am paying for.

Our landlord gave us a paper with useful numbers on it when we moved in…they live in Cape Town now, so we need numbers of people to contact for emergencies. It seemed a little odd to me that there was the number for the person who repairs the motor for the automated driveway gate…there was no number for the garage door opener guy or a plumber or a drain company…why the driveway gate? But with the stresses of moving in, I thought nothing of it and focussed on more immediate concerns.

One of the first things I noticed were the flies…omigod, the flies! They were everywhere! Hordes of them! I found them in my refrigerator (apparently sneaked in while the door was open) I found them in the oven door, between the two sheets of glass. I took to using more kitchen towels to cover exposed food that I used for drying hands and dishes. I could not cut a slice of bread without the flies swarming me, demanding their tribute. My landlord professed ignorance when I lodged a complaint.

The mosquitoes were awful…I am allergic to mosquito bites and the bite that makes a little bump on you and itches uncomfortably for a day or two gives me a red swelling two or three inches across that itches like my skin is on fire for ten days or more. But mosquitoes are a fact of life in Africa, even in expensive, posh suburbs, because nobody here has a clue about screens. Instead, we plug little aerosol misters into the wall and they emit a toxic vapour into the room to kill the little buggers if they come in. Unfortunately, the lure of my pale, plump, succulent flesh seemed to overwhelm even their death throes, and the little buggers continued feasting on me, even after we had installed two different brands of mosquito vaporizers in the bedroom.

Then, a couple of weeks after moving in, I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night only to find a rather large cockroach gazing at me from the front of the toilet tank. Before I could raise the alarm and kill the little monster, it fled behind the tank, doubtless wondering what the feck I was doing up running around during what should have been his personal time. It was not long before I was finding roach droppings and eggs in the bowls and pots…I grew up in a roach-infested house near the beach in San Diego…I know ’em when I see ’em!

The bites got worse…some of them healed in a couple of weeks but others turned blackish purple and after the blister in the centre broke, a deep pit formed. Today, nearly three months after moving into this house of horrors, many those bites still have not fully healed…they are shrinking in size but a nasty purple scar remains. We began spraying a moat of insecticide on the carpet around the bed and spraying the bed and mattress each time we changed the sheets, thinking maybe it was something actually in the bed, but when the maid came to me with similar bites, and her bedroom is down the hall (and we don’t share bedding) I knew it was something else.

And then, outside under the patio cover, we spotted it…a large spider nest that was open on one side…there had been a spider hatch just below the main bedroom balcony, to which there are doors and windows from the bedroom. We actually suffered three successive waves of these biting spider attacks, the maid’s room only being attacked in the second one, so I suspect there were three spider nests that hatched within weeks of each other, the spiderlings taking refuge from our great bird population by coming indoors. These, then, are the purple bites with the blistered centres…spider bites, most likely yellow sac spiders. We keep them out of the bed by spraying every time we change the linens, but I see little spiders on the interior walls of the house almost every day.

The Yorkie has spent most of the last three months fretting at the baby gate at the front door, frantically beseeching me to open the gate and let her out to chase down the rodent she was convinced was hanging around out there. While we were still unpacking, the maid found rodent droppings on the patio where they had chewed their way through a trash bag full of packing paper, and we found evidence of the beasties on the front doorstep. But a few weeks ago, while standing in the driveway, I saw a rat run out from under my car and disappear into the hydrangeas beneath the scullery window. And where there is 1 rat, there are more.

So, a few weeks ago the landlord was in town and he stopped to visit. My first concern was the insect life in this house but I was totally unprepared for his blasé attitude: when I said I had seen cockroaches, his reply was “Oh, yes, you will see roaches here.” Excuse me? The man knew the house had roaches and he let us move in 1) without warning us and 2) without spraying for them? What?? Now my belongings have roaches…I moved in here roach-free (we had our house sprayed every 6 months or so…we lived near a marshland and roaches are common in such places) but I’m afraid I may not move out in the same condition.

He professed puzzlement at the fly problem, saying he’d never noticed much of a problem. Well, I guess he’s never bothered to look at the light fixtures in the kitchen and scullery ceilings, which are literally full of dead flies! And I don’t think he believed me about the rat at all. But he promised to send out an exterminator company to do a quotation.

Three weeks passed and the company came, did their assessment and went. Still no exterminator. Meanwhile the driveway gate goes on the fritz, necessitating a call to the gate guy on the list…ten days, three call outs, and multiple parts swaps later, we find this is an on-going problem in this house, and that is why his name and phone number are on the list. This particular motor was installed last November, a replacement for another, even less reliable motor.

We have had a terrible problem with the doors and locks. On the day we moved in, one of the furniture movers got locked in the guest bathroom because the lock doesn’t work properly. He had to hand the key out the bathroom window to Hubby, who was able to unlock the door from the outside. The door from the dining room to the patio would not close properly…it had to be slammed…which knocked a sensor for the alarm system off the door and broke the interior of the lock, leaving us with a door to the outside that could not be locked and an alarm sensor precariously reattached with tape. The front door had to be shouldered open and the doors to the balcony could be opened, but it took my husband and his 100kg+ frame to pull them closed enough to latch and lock. Our landlord instructed the handyman (who lives next door) to come and fix the doors, which he almost did…he fixed the front door, he half-fixed the dining room door, and didn’t touch the balcony doors at all. This last, however, may be a good thing because, when the landlord was out there with his father just recently, a wasp took umbrage to their close proximity to his nest…right beside the door!...that it stung the landlord’s father. That could have been a tragic event if it had been me, as allergic as I am to stings. It would have been nice if we had been forewarned that this was a possibility, however, so that I could get a bee kit!

Power is a bit of a testy topic in South Africa these days, and I was dismayed to find my electricity unexpectedly going off several times a week. We weren’t sure if we were putting an undue strain on the house’s electrical capacity and ultimately asked the man across the road who told us that reliability of the electricity supply was poor in this area. So, for nearly three months I am enduring unexpected power outages of unpredictable duration several times a week. Ya think the landlord might have warned us about this?

Then there was the hot water heater’s repeated boilovers when we went out of town ten days ago. My poor maid, who was left to housesit (which she loved…she got the big screen all to herself for four whole days!) called me at noon on Saturday to report “water is everywhere!” Do you think the landlord or his wife answered our frantic telephone calls or SMSs? Not a one. Ultimately the maid got the handyman from next door to show her how to shut the thing off and when we returned on Monday…after more futile attempts to reach the landlord…we called his mommy who called a plumber for us and got the mess sorted out.

But as we pulled into the driveway on Monday afternoon, the car boot full of groceries, to see a wall of steaming water cascading off the porch roof…and the driveway gate choosing just that moment to again fail…I finally lost my patience. The following day Hubby and I drafted a letter to the landlord enumerating our complaints and, basically, saying that if he didn’t take some swift action, we would either fix the problems ourselves and deduct it from the rent or we would start looking for another rental. Amazingly, the man who could not return our telephone calls or respond to our texts for a week or more, got back to Hubby in less than half an hour after the email was sent! It was all a big misunderstanding, he says, he’ll look into it…

And so now the gate seems to be fixed…and the handyman will be here Saturday to fix the doors…and tomorrow the exterminators are due to arrive.

Just in time, too...last Saturday morning when Hubby went out to feed the dogs, there at the bottom of the steps was a very dead and thoroughly chewed rat. Pretty little Candy, who looks like a dainty white poodle, is part Jack Russell and I suspect this rat’s attempts to help himself to her bowl of midnight snack kibble wasn’t exactly to her liking...and she let him know it with deadly effect.

So, by tomorrow evening our house should have received a radical verminectomy…bug spraying and rodent traps should help a lot. But I am a loss as to who to call to help us with that landlord…

I haven’t abandoned you! Really! It’s just that this week has been beyond hectic!

Having a new puppy in the house is a lot like having a new baby, especially in the sleep department. Puddin’ is still getting up in the wee hours, but it seems to be more related to being cold than anything else. She gets out of her bed to go potty and the tile floors are really cold at 5 am, so she comes to the bathroom door and whimpers for rescue. Most mornings she is shivering when I open the door for her, and she snuggles down with me in the bed and goes right back to sleep. But it still interrupts my sleep. So on top of everything else, I am walking around sleep-deprived and not a little punchy!

We live near a vlei, so vermin are a fact of life here. The insects here are huge and more aggressive than I am accustomed to…when was the last time you had a 2 inch long cockroach run AT you in broad daylight??...so we have an exterminator come out every six months and spray, which has worked out very well. Since my allergy to cats has gone out of control, we can’t keep a mouser, which is how I kept my mouse population to zero in California, so we occasionally have to deal with mice. Until last week, some Rattex…a kind of poison pellet…in a plastic feeding contraption was working fine. We’d put some out when we found mouse droppings and in a day or two a dead mouse would present itself for disposal. The good news was that they seemed to prefer nesting in my study, which is not actually inside the house, so they never got into the kitchen. The bad news is that they didn’t stay there.

Early last week Thandiswe made a loaf of bread and put it on the counter on a rack to cool, a kitchen towel draped over it. When she came back later to bag the bread, she removed the towel and found the crust on one side had been chewed away! We quickly mobilized and filled and distributed the Rattex feeders, expecting the problem to be resolved quickly. No such luck.

Over the course of the next few days a plastic bread bag was chewed through and more bread eaten, the Rattex feeders pushed around…one flipped up on end, another actually pushed off the kitchen counter…and I actually surprised the creature as it climbed up the cord from behind the refrigerator! I didn’t see it, but the sounds were unmistakeable. I switched to a more serious bait…one feed and death! the packet advertised…but Mr. Mouse simply wouldn’t succumb. Finally, in frustration, I called my bug guy, Han, and asked if he could help. He hurried over and put out some poisoned grain and some little gel cakes, cautioned me to keep the dogs away from it, and then made the pronouncement I, in the back of my mind, was dreading. There were no droppings around, despite nearly a week of infestation and multiple feedings…he thought it was not a mouse, but a rat!

A rat! OMG! My personal take on things is that having mice in your house can be a thing caused by outside circumstances rather than unclean personal habits…drought will drive field mice into nearby neighbourhoods, construction on nearby sites will do the same. But rats are for people who are dirty and low rent and living in decaying neighbourhoods. OK…it’s irrational, I know, but I have a greater horror of harbouring a rat than a mouse, and now I am one of those low-rent people with a rat in her house!!

So, two days later, Thandiswe is cleaning the kitchen and calls me out. The refrigerator badly needed a cleaning…it had that funky “something in the back of the fridge is past its sell-by date” smell, so I set her to work cleaning and deodorizing it. She had finished the cleaning but the smell lingered, She took out the trash but still the smell lingered. She removed the spare oven rack from beside the refrigerator and peered into the narrow gap and called me. Sure enough, there, between the fridge and the cupboard was a dead rat, stinking up the place, Gross! Gross! Gross!

So, chasing after a puppy and trying to paper train it is a full time job. Hubby, dear man that he is, allows me free reign in training and disciplining Puddin’ while he takes a strong hand in entertaining her, For Valentine’s Day he decided to take us both out to dinner at our favourite tapas restaurant, as they have outside seating in a lovely courtyard with a fountain. I dressed her in the new harness I had made for her, packed her in her puppy purse, and we headed out for our 7 pm…just dusk…reservation. She was a little darling! She slept through most of it but when she was awake, she sat in my lap and took little bites of chicken from my fingers.

We got home about 9:15 and while Hubby prepared to pill the old dog (who is now on a daily dose of Prednisone), I headed for the bathroom to put Puddin’ down on her puddle pad. She is very good about not going in her tote bag. I put my purse on the kitchen counter, took two steps towards the bedroom and stopped, Something was amiss. Suddenly, I realized that I was looking at the back of our big screen TV standing in the hallway leading to the bedroom! We were interrupting a burglary!!

They didn’t get away with much…two watches, a camera, two laptops, and some gold and silver hoop earrings, a few other small items. They didn’t get the TVs or entertainment system, sound system, or the expensive jewellery. But they totally ransacked the house…we don’t think they had gotten to the kitchen yet, as it looked normal…dumping out the contents of all the cupboards and closets in what we think was a search for a safe. Sorry, dudes…that was pried out of the wall by the 2005 thieves and never replaced.

We called our security company and the police, but we couldn’t figure out how they got in! We have burglar bars over every window in the house that can be opened, The patio is surrounded by decorative iron fencing, making it look like a gazebo, but protecting the vulnerable sets of French doors. None of the bars were damaged, none of the doors were broken in…we could not figure out how they got into the house.

Hubby walked around outside with the security people, torches (flashlights) in hand while I went upstairs to figure out how they got to the big TV…there is a heavy-duty decorative iron gate at the top of the stairs and I was afraid I might have forgotten to close it last time I was up there. Our discoveries were shocking.

Hubby and the security guard found the point of entry…the thieves had actually removed a fixed window pane from the frame by chipping out the putty holding the glass in place. They removed the glass and set it aside and then crawled into the house (the window was at ground level, one of several in a column of windows from floor to ceiling) on their bellies like the snakes they are. Through this window they were able to hand out small items like the laptops, but they couldn’t get the big screen TV out this way. There is evidence that they tried to break the burglar bars on the window immediately above their access point, as the metal is slightly bent and there are gouge marks on the window frame. We suspect their intent was to remove those bars, break the wood crossbar, and create an opening through which the big screen could pass.

My discovery was that I had, indeed, closed and locked the upstairs gate: they had broken the lock. When my ironmonger, Davey, came the next day to survey the damage and measure us up for new, improved burglar bars, he took the lock out of its case and took it to a locksmith to get a replacement. The locksmith said that the thieves could only have done this damage to the lock with a chisel and heavy hammer, and that they had obviously worked on it for quite some time. So, these guys came with house breaking tools…not a couple of kids just getting into mischief.

We obviously interrupted them…the bedroom TV was unplugged and removed from its armoire and standing on the bedroom floor next to the breached window, its remote apparently pocketed as we cannot find it. The big screen was on the floor in the downstairs hallway rather than on its stand in the upstairs lounge: its remote was found in our downstairs bedroom, on the bookcase near the bed. My guess is that one of them was working on a way to get the bars off the bedroom window to permit egress of the big screen, the other one was sitting on Hubby’s side of the bed (the remote was found on the bookcase there) rifling through the odds and ends of stuff he keeps there, looking for valuables.

Interestingly, they opened his jewellery box and took two watches, but left four behind: two old collectable watches (one an Omega), a Citizen and a Seiko. They also ignored two pairs of cufflinks, one of them Mont Blanc. The didn’t touch a drawer full of DVDs or a stack of CDs. They took cheap ($7 to $90 in value) earrings and left behind a charm bracelet watch with a diamond set in the face and trendy, chunky sterling silver jewellery. We believe we interrupted them, as they were obviously still working on a way to get the big screen out, but I find myself wondering if they were pros or just chancers…they had pro tools and got in like pros, but obviously did not recognize items of significant value and took stuff of little or no value.

We have numerous windows that do not have bars over them because they are fixed windows…now Hubby is nervous that these guys will come back to finish the job we interrupted. They know what is in here, they know where it is, and they know how to get in. Until Davey gets the new bars installed (which will protect those windows as well) and new, improved locks for the security gates, the house has to be occupied at all times. So, I’ve been a little preoccupied these last few days and not paying proper attention to the blog.

Hopefully, things will be back on an even keel again soon.

Oh…in the midst of all of this Hubby announced that we may have to move to Johannesburg in the next few months, so I also have had estate agents and rental agents out to look at our house, and been poring over the web looking for suitable accommodation in Joburg.

Life is never boring in this place!!