buzzzzzzzzzz new adventure

[Tula]

Adventure seems to follow you

 

[addy1]

I would prefer some down time...............at least for a bit.

If I can get back behind the bushes I will take a picture of the area they are living in, if they stay calm with me mucking around back there.

 

[j.w]

Oh boy, you better watch out! You are gonna get stung!

 

[addy1]

Oh boy, you better watch out! You are gonna get stung!

Getting used to it, around 50ish stings this year.

 

[j.w]

Whoa and ouch!

 

[Tara]

Glad you didn't come across any food in the attic. I was in the house of a hoarder some years ago, floor to ceiling packed full of rubbish and junk, rooms completely disappeared, oh but @addy a food hoarder, I can't even imagine the horror. I'd tackle the bees any day over a hoarder, I'd have to be dragged fighting and screaming before I would ever go into a hoarded house again. But a food hoarder and rats, that just gives me the chills. Good look with it, your very brave.

 

[addy1]

When we saw her in Nov. the house was clean, no food laying around kitchen clean, no smells. No junk laying around. We did not enter closets, open the over stuffed drawers , stuffed with stuff.

When she went into the hospital in Feb, the neighbor sent us pictures, kitchen dirty disorganized, ow house ok. The food was in meals on wheels boxes, rotting, over loaded fridge, unable to close the door, not seen were boxes of grains, noodles etc in the closets.
We cheated, after the cops were called due to the the smell, the neighbors thought someone died, we called a company and had them clean out the food. 400 bucks worth of clean out. So when we got there in March, we had to deal with rats, rats poo etc. The company did not search for the boxes of food stored in closets etc.

I was hauling out some boxes of just napkins,, tons of napkins, nice bound up with rubber bands boxed and a rat ran over my foot.................The napkins were the type you get from fast food places. Lots of nesting material.

The attic had rat traps, she did not have a ladder that would get her up in to the crawl space.

She had hundreds of magazines, books etc on cooking healthy, she died at 68 lbs, her height was around 5 ft 6 or so. Bought food excessively never ate more than a bite.

100's of containers of gorilla glue, she loved gorilla glue, a huge bag of pens pencils, felt tips I am talking hundreds, rubber bands, clips she bought and bought way more than she could use. But a neat hoarder................all stored in bags, drawers, etc.

It was sad.

We had a lady helping us clean the house, great worker, met her at home depot where she works. She worked hard to help us clean up the house. It did not smell, but still had poo laying around here and there that we missed. The rats are dead and gone, that is all we cared about, the rest we can deal with.

Tore out a lot of the cabinets, pricing new ones to install. The kitchen still has the odor. The only way to remove is to pull the dry wall etc where they did a lot of traveling, also pulling the cabinets they had a party in. Chewed holes through.

 

[Lisak1]

You're gonna be an expert in pest clean up - rats, roaches, rogue bees... what next??

 

[Tula]

Ugh, the odor sounds pretty gross but the new dry wall and cabinets should solve the problem.....are you thinking of selling the house or renting it?

 

[Tara]

I was imagining food a decade old or longer stored and rotting everywhere. Years ago my roommate tried to remove ice from the fridge we all shared but bust the Freon in the freezer so we had to unplug it. That fridge sat for a few weeks before it was taken to the curb, and on the day of removal the food our roommate said they would dispose of was still in it, so of course the day we moved it to the curb on the dolly it started to leak ground beef and cabbage juice and other stuff all over the stairs, the smell was absolutely horrendous with us all gagging and shouting with every step. Even though we tapped the door shut, we knew been on a busy enough street people would investigate the fridge, we sat in the window upstairs, and sure enough one fella broke the tape to have a look at the fridge, he got a big shock to his system judging by his coughing fit, all day we sat upstairs watching people open the fridge door and the more people who took a look and had a reaction the more we laughed. When it got a little dark out one poor fella really got in there for a quick look, he bent over and threw up a bit. I hate to say it but it was a fun day.

 

[addy1]

I was imagining food a decade old or longer stored and rotting everywhere

Well the canned food, bulging cans were really old, the rats ate the labels off of some of them.
The bagged food like spices, mixes, stuff you might find in a cupboard was all aged by 10 years at least. She would get food given to her as people came and went. The rats had fun with it.

The cupboard was so stuffed it started coming off the wall. It was way overloaded with bags of stuff, rice, mixes etc. We fixed it in Nov.

I put all in boxes, the keepable stuff and the get rid of stuff in other boxes. Around 8 large boxes.
I removed all the old food, had it in 5 boxes, told her I wanted to trash it. She would not let me, said she would do it. Well all was put back in the cupboard. Even the rat chewed stuff.

The fridge, the second fridge were stuffed with food. This is the freezer side, the doors did not close. A neighbor took this picture.

That neighbor had a mask on she could not handle the smell, but wanted to let us know what was happening. This was when the tenant was in the hospital. We hired a company to clean out the food The tenant was told we had to due to the rat invasion. I think she knew she was not coming back because she agreed to us doing it. So we hired the company to remove all food they could see.

Most of it expired the other side the same even worse. The food in the fresh side was rotting. A lot of it expired. When I looked in Nov, I told her I would clean out the fresh side, throw out the expired foods. She said she would do it.

Boxes of meals on wheels rotting.

This is what the rats did to our brand new fridge, just bought before she moved in. Ate the insulation the backing off of it, ate into the water line. And boy did it stink even empty............horrible smell.

Then once all water was removed this is what they ate to get fluid. This is sink cleaner. They also ate hand lotion, etc

 

[addy1]

are you thinking of selling the house or renting it?

At this time we are going to keep it for us to use on occasion. It is his parents house, we bought it from his two brothers when the parents passed. We MIGHT do a short term rental, you can get around 8k rent from winter visitors. But we won't be ready for this season.

Eventually, when our MD life slows down, we will take over the condo on the water way and sell this place. We are trying to get out of the rental business. Have two he bought before he knew me to sale in the next year or so. Need to get the tenants out, fix up and sale. This area is a real hot market, but we are not ready.

This place is nice, a two bedrm, two full bath, almost a duplex. Have a house, carport, laundry, carport than the other house. A lot of green space, heated pools, all heated to 84 or so. Around 1200 sq. Old houses, stucco and metal studs, built in the 70's never been knocked down in a hurricane.

You're gonna be an expert in pest clean up - rats, roaches, rogue bees... what next??

Hopefully nothing! We are going to hire the lady that helped us to come by once a month and do a visual check to make sure there is no invasion of ants, rats, mice while we are not around.

 

[addy1]

Ugh, the odor sounds pretty gross but the new dry wall and cabinets should solve the problem.

The kitchen is the only place you catch the rat odor. Hubby opened two walls, pulled the dry wall, pulled more cabinets. We have a few more walls to open to get rid of the stink. Cleaning out the poo and spraying with bleach.

I spent the day measuring for new cabinets, we are going to swing by lowes check out their upgraded ones then drive down towards Miami to look at cabinets to go ones. We used cabinets to go in our MD house. They are great solid wood well made. We might go with them, will cost 1/3 more than lowes/hd but resale value will be up higher.

 

[addy1]

Nephew says our Md house is behaving itself. He likes have the ponds off, nothing to worry about. A mini vaca living there using our hot tub.

 

[MitchM]

You're gonna be an expert in pest clean up - rats, roaches, rogue bees... what next??

Crime scenes!