The Humans are winning!!?? Part 2

A few months went by. The children happily ate breakfast and scrambled off for school. Then that fateful morning we once again heard the cry “What’s for breakfast mom? Our bread has been chewed on again”

Ok. Just how are they getting into the kitchen? No holes in the walls, ceiling or cupboards. Time to call in the best sleuths in the family. The investigation crew combed the area and found a hole in the screen of the window above the stairs beside the kitchen. Fair enough, we fixed the hole. Next night our bread was again sampled and adding fruit to his diet, he enjoyed a bit of banana for desert. Checking the screen, made of plastic netting, our investigators saw another hole.

“Catch them when they come in”, we thought. and set the trap up right on the ledge in front of the hole. For a few night the trap snapped happily as we caught the family of rats one by one. The kids once more smiled at breakfast.

Ah ha, now it seems we have caught them all it is time to go all out and buy expensive metal screening.Not to be daunted by our rescreening with metal screen, the rat came back the very next day and chewed a hole in the bathroom screen, this time bringing his family with him. They enjoyed a meal of bread and apples and departed laughing. So we inquired of yet other Brazilians.

“Xubinho kills anything”, they all replied shaking their heads.

“Well”, we thought, “xubinho is the poison from manioc plants. Manioc not processed properly can kill a human. " Sounds good enough.

We fixed the bathroom screen with a metal one, put the bread in the oven for protection, poured Xubinho on a small piece of bread and went to bed with smiles on our faces.