Frozen Rat

"There's a mouse in the loungeroom" said Marcus. No, actually a headless rat. Elf put it in a bag and put it in the freezer.

We have had a lot of rat action, probably something to do with the chooks and their chook pellets freely available a couple of doors up. Our loquat tree might have attracted them once but it hasnt fruited lately. Hobart City Council sent a small officious man to inspect. The rat nests are over our back fence on council property so we can't do anything ourselves. Will the council help us? No - they are "native rats" and protected. Elf has inquired and the two species of native rat are the water rat and the swamp rat - neither of whom would be likely to live burrowed in a hill methinks.

So - the rat is frozen and Elf is going to drop it into the boys down at forensic (or something) who will do all that CSI stuff, recreate the scene of its murder and hopefully tell us that is a plain old rattus rattus. Then we'll see if the council can do something useful.

[The small officious man is the same one who visited our Amnesty stall at Salamanca and said we had to stop selling Graham's marmalade until we have it labelled with full nutritional information].