Part 2 of Melvyn’s diary about his struggles with the rat.

Ah well, it’s Melvyn back again.

The follow on story about my gardener and the rats in the garden. Well anyway, I said to the gardener to get these rat traps. He goes online, he gets four rat traps and I’m looking at them and thinking, are they going to be big enough. They look more like mouse traps to me. So anyway I didn’t say nothing to John. I said ‘Alright John, so are you going to bait them up?’ So he said ‘Yes, I’ve got some peanut butter for them’. Seems to like peanut butter, I don’t know. So he baits them up and he puts the most gigantic amount of peanut butter on each one of these traps, unbeknown to me. I found this out next day. He baits them up, took my dogs out then goes home and then, you know, all done. He wasn’t doing any gardening because it’s winter. They’ve been down now for at least, what I would say, since October, yeh October, it’s been going on and it is now January 2021.

So anyway he put four traps out, baited them heavily, too much, too much. So consequently the ratatouille, he goes round these rat traps licking all the peanut butter off, but no traps going off. Going off but not being caught. Because rats are really, really crafty. I’ve been going on YouTube and having a look.

Oh dear, you know, so I said to John, with all his mental health problems and stuff, he’s looking after his Mum as well, quite elderly mother, and he’s really a fantastic lad. And I really like him as a friend now. We’ve become friends and he does shopping for me and I just phone him up and ‘Can you get me some milk or a loaf of bread’ and some sort of stuff like that and he’s just so very helpful. I chuckle at times. I made some sausage rolls, I made a batch, I’ve made four lots now. Back in the summer, my next door neighbour’s got a pear tree and cor they really are lovely pears. They’re cooking pears, so they’re really nice and big so I made an upside down, I forget what they call them, tartine or something like that they call them. Upside down pie, anyway with these pears. And I took John some round next door, his name is John. He’s an Indian guy, really lovely man. I took him round some and it’s really nice for him to try these, and he’s really nice, he’s really really taken on [inaudible].

Anyway, I made some sausage rolls as well. I’ve made four lots now and typical man, my first two lots were brilliant and then the third lot I said ‘Oh yeah’, noncholant, well I can do it now, weren’t so good. But still edible. And my fourth lot was quite nice as well. So I went back to it, doing it properly. So I give John, my gardener, some and also my next door neighbour whose name is John, give him some and I’m very pleased, it means I can give him something very nice.

And anyway, to get on with these rats, we still haven’t caught a rat. Got six mice and I suppose that’s something but still haven’t caught these rats