Don't Hire the Orkin Man

As you know, we had (or maybe still have) RATs, yikes. They've eaten the under side of the dish washer, the wires for the bottom oven on our 1970s stove which has two ovens fortunately, and the condensation hose that leads out of the our furnace. Dave fixed this last one sort of. And the Orkin man came several times. He put out traps. That's all. These are smart rats (what other kind would we have in our house?). They walk around the glue traps and have no interested in poisoned bait. So, I fired the Orkin man because they don't actually do anything: they won't move the stove to see whether these animals are living behind it or what! Instead I've now hired a small, family-owned and operated company in Virgina -- Ward's Pest Control. Mr. Ward came out to the house, looked around the foundation: brick and cement block. They can't eat into that. So we must be letting them in somehow. He concluded that the rats might be coming in through our new shower's drain pipe in the basement. His people are going to come to pour concrete into the handful of holes he found. More as it happens.