Pest Issues

We came down to our kitchen last week and we were just a wee bit shocked by what we saw.  Apparently, some sort of rodent or SOMETHING had been gnawing away at the cabinets and ceiling area.  Perfect!  And, the growing season is really getting going now that Mother Nature has decided she might like to see some green growing stuff instead of the white snowing stuff.  How are we supposed to deal with giant rodents eating our kitchen when we need to be planting things?!?

Our upper cabinets!  They're GONE!

We weren't entirely sure what sort of critter would do this kind of damage to our farm, so we really didn't know what sort of trap to use.  We decided to put a motion sensitive camera out to see if we could catch the varmint in the act.  After all, how much more damage could be done?  Surely it wouldn't be all that much more, would it?

How wrong we were.

We're guessing the appalling reddish orange color scared it away.

Oh look.  Lots of colors.

We now have no LOWER cabinets and no plumbing in the room that WAS our kitchen.  Alas. 

On the plus side, there appears to be a nice new subfloor that doesn't have rotted holes riddled through it.  We will accept that as an improvement.  But, in that case, we know Travis Duncan was responsible for that work.  So, Travis is a positive.  And, the removal of the lower cabinets made it possible.  But, we STILL weren't sure what was rendering our kitchen useless..... and red-orange.  Ugh.

Evidence spotted in the room included a couple of wrecking bars, a reciprocating saw and a hammer.  Great.  We're dealing with pests that can also use tools.  We also noticed that the kitchen isn't being 'consumed' since there is all sorts of material just outside the backdoor of the house now.  That makes us wonder if someone tried to STEAL our kitchen but realized they would have to take it apart in order to get it out the door. 

Clearly, once outside with better light, they realized our kitchen wasn't worth the effort, so they left the remnants in a pile.... for us to clean up.  That's not very thoughtful.

So, we took some time today to download some of the photos from our camera and we can finally show the guilty party.

Um.

Ok.  You got me.  But, Tammy made me do it.