Early one Friday morning I was going through my emails when a photo caught my eye. I saw what looked like an exploded pumpkin scattered across a kitchen table in hundred of little bits. What on earth happened there? The writer of the email asked if I could come round and look at the situation because ‘we haven’t cleaned it up yet, Eugene; we want you to see what’s happened.’
‘Weet je hoe ze binnen zijn gekomen? Door het kattenluik!’
Half an hour later, I was standing in the kitchen. The bits of pumpkin were not just on the table – the floor was covered in them too. One of the residents told me it had happened that night: ‘I could hear some noises from the kitchen, but I didn’t pay any attention to them, and when I came into the kitchen this morning I was shocked by the mess. Eugene, can you guess what happened here?’ I scratched my head and said I had no idea. ‘Rats! Rats had a party in our kitchen, with a delicious pumpkin from our own garden as the main course!’ Shivers ran down my spine at the very idea. I told them we regularly get problems with rats around here, but indoors?
‘Have you left the windows or doors open?’ I asked. ‘No, do you know how they came in? Through the cat flap! We
don’t have a cat but we do have a cat flap.’
So those cheeky rats just went through it. The door to the party venue was open. There might as well have been a
sign above it saying ‘rats welcome’.
I called pest control and advised them – no surprise here – to close off the cat flap.
Eugene van Meteren works for student housing provider Idealis as a caretaker. He writes about his experiences for Resource. Read all his columns on resource-online.nl.