Bumps with the house sit
Sometimes you have to just roll with it. The cats like to bring in trophies – especially mice. We got our first dead mouse on evening #2. But the day after the hosts left, we could hear a live mouse! First it was in the living room, and then I could hear it in the attached kitchen. Then I could see it popping out from under the fridge! So the next day we had to stop at the hardware store to get something to get rid of it! (which took less than 30 minutes, baited with peanut butter). Update – by 3 weeks in we have had 5 mice (3 of them being alive) plus a dead bird – with feathers strewn everywhere!
Since this is a tropical island, there are ants everywhere! The pet parents did warn us to not leave the wet food sitting on the floor after the cats finished eating, or it would attract ants. Boy, does it ever! And it doesn’t take very long to have 50 teeny ants in there! So now, here is the dilemma – if the cat leaves some food and you want to throw it out, won’t the garbage also attract ants? Hmmm….
The ants have also taught me to wash the cooking implements very well – the hard way! The BBQ flipper apparently wasn’t clean enough, and next time I looked at it on the drying pad, it had 20 ants on it. Whoops! Time to double scrub everything!!! And clean the sink well afterwards too!
The day we went to the beach and were gone for hours was the day the irrigation system malfunctioned. Of course it did. I emailed them and asked what to do, and was told to turn it off and then back on, and to look online for videos for a certain type of irrigation system (even though they had a different brand, lol). Turning it off did – nothing. It was still spraying water. Then they suggested we ask the next door neighbour, who was very helpful, and gave us a mini lesson, showed us how he was able to test which controller it was, and gave us a plan B to get it to shut off next time the program ran if it stayed on again. Yay!
