FRIENDS of ours have a holiday home at the bottom of our road, right in the forest.
They were down for the festive season and very soon trotted up the road to ask for some advice (and have a sundowner, of course).
They had developed an ugly wet, brown stain on the ceiling in the house and on investigating in the roof they found what was obviously a large midden (a place used by animals to leave their droppings).
They described the droppings to me, I consulted various books on the subject and based on stories heard about this problem and the midden, I decided they had a dassie in the dak.
I suggested the local rock rabbit man and the game was on. They found where the dassie was accessing the ceiling (he had unwisely left a trail of footprints leading to a gap between the roof and the outside wall).
A dassie trap was laid, baited with banana, and a bait trail of banana was put between the trap and the gap. Now all there was to do was to wait patiently for the dassie to oblige.
He did. Apparently he was not a happy dassie and had to be transferred to a box for safe keeping and eventual release in a wild and natural area.
The gap was sealed and the midden removed and now all that needs to be done is paint the ceiling.
Rock rabbits in the ceiling are not that unusual an occurrence down here.
It is thought that the female will stay in the bush and look after her young, if she has any, while the male will forage and often find a convenient and cosy house in which to spend his nights.
Lots of creatures seem to enjoy living in the ceiling. Bats are common and very problematic tenants, we have seen a green mamba sneak into our roof (and we never saw it leave, not that we were watching very closely), and of course we frequently hear squeaks and rustlings up there at night, but we assume it’s the ever-cute woodland dormouse (which is probably why the mamba wanted to be up there).
This won’t help with mice, but the experts say that it’s a good idea to make sure that there are no gaps between your roof and the outer walls. If there are, seal them up.
Nile monitors sometimes live in ceilings too. We were sitting on the stoep of a friend’s home in the Lapalala Wilderness in the Waterberg mountains, drinking coffee.
It had been an interesting morning. Earlier, a habituated white rhino had ambled across the veld towards the house, scratched itself against the stoep and then fallen asleep at the bottom of the steps.
Next, a Nile monitor jack-knifed towards us. He avoided the rhino, climbed onto the stoep, up the wall of the house and into the roof. We were mildly surprised, but our hosts explained, “He lives there and he eats rats and things so he earns his lodging”.
So, you really never know what’s up there do you, or at the bottom of the steps. Cheers!
