War is declared….

 

About half way through our trip we had a visitor arrive down the chimney into the log burner. As it wasn’t Christmas and there was no sign of presents we were a little suspicious!

 

 

We thought it was a baby squirrel – grey, fluffy tail etc. So carefully forming a path to the front door we let it out of the house.

On mentioning this to our neighbours they became a little animated (!) and said it was very unlikely to be a squirrel and probably a Loir. Consulting the dictionary the translation is Dormouse. Now this didn’t seem to make any sense but a quick bit of research showed that the Romans bred these creatures to eat! Our neighbours said that they make their nests inside walls and eventually the walls can fall down – in fact one of the barns in the hamlet is missing a wall due to them! They had found a nest in their barn wall and after ‘disposing’ of the occupants had poured 17 buckets of concrete into it to restore its integrity! There message was clear – they have to go!

Over the next few nights we heard a lot of noise, one web comment says that at night the ‘wear Doc Martins’! We can believe it. They decided that the space above the two new attic bedrooms was the place to exercise and the girls were being woken up several times each night. We think they got in through the open velux windows (one did come into our bedroom through an open window but soon left!) and then got in between the tiles and the new insulation where we have not finished the work yet. We have temporarily sealed all these gaps now.

So war was declared. If you are squeemish then don’t read on!

We attacked on three fronts –

Poison – don’t like this approach but we were told it was necessary. We found one very sleepy Loir outside the house, we think suffering from the effects of the poison.

Traps – humane traps baited with apple. Three were caught this way.

Shooting – interesting visit to the local hunting shop and you can buy air rifles and non-auto shotguns without a licence. Decided on a .22 air rifle.

After three days of battle we had ‘dealt with’ five of them and the last night of the trip the girls slept peacefully!

Hopefully we dealt with them before they became established in the house and it looks like there are no nests in the walls. We have someone keeping an eye on the traps over the next couple of weeks just in case!