Living in the country...
Living in the country just doesn't seem to be like it appears on TV and in the movies...... Or maybe it's just here in North Florida that appears to be nature against man. Moving into the woods does appear to have significant drawbacks to your sanity.
Today started off normally. I opened my eyes. Then it started going downhill.
Connie wasn't anywhere to be seen, so I went out to hunt her down. She was clearing away the brush around the Onan automatic generator with a scowl on her face. Uh oh... She said she tried to test the generator (which admittedly we haven't done for quite a while), and although the generator itself started up, the power didn't switch on in the buildings from it. Figuring we were going to have to take a look, she was clearing all the plants from around it that grew up and in since the last time we needed to get near the thing.
Enter Rich Z.....
So, I pulled off the panels around the generator and saw clear evidence that we had some animals who had decided that the generator case made a real dandy place to live. From the appearance of the pile of droppings, probably rats. Now a few years ago, we had a similar problem with our vehicles. The Jeep, Silverado, and Astro van ALL got the wiring chewed up by some rats suddenly appearing and taking up residence in those vehicles. This was pre-Corvette, fortunately..... Cost us several thousand dollars for repairs to get them running again after the chewed up wiring was repaired. Hated to do it, but we put out poison to take care of that problem, which did work. I just hate the stuff because of the collateral damage it can cause, but really couldn't see any alternatives. Live traps? After causing all that damage and expense? Hell no! I wanted those suckers DEAD!
Which reminds me, I had better check under the hood of all the vehicles today....
Not only rats, but evidently field mice as well are in the generator. There is a control box with the power distribution cables going in it with just enough room for a small mouse to squeeze through. I took off the cover, and sure enough, there was a nest in there. So apparently we had families of two different rodents living in there. I saw some wires chewed on in the control box, but nothing looked chewed all the way through that I could see. But even after scraping and blowing all that crap out of the generator, we still had the same symptoms: Generator motor starts up, but doesn't transfer power to the building. I do hope Murphy's Law isn't looking in, because if he is, sure as hell, we will have a power outage today. I still have a manual generator in the work room, and could syphon some gasoline out of one of the vehicles, but that would be a pain in the butt after the money we spent on that automatic generator. So it appears a service call is in order on Monday to get this fixed.
With all the woods we have around us, what in the WORLD are these varmints thinking that they have to get into our vehicles and equipment like a generator? You would think the smell of snakes that we have here would keep the damned things MILES away. Maybe that's the ticket. Instead of selling off surplus adults like I do, just release them and let them chase down the varmints. Fight fire with fire, as such.....
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About Midway thru your post, I was thinking 
The same as you... 
Doesn't Rich have the perfect rodent control at his disposal? and it's all Natural! 
! But, I've put out rat poison and pretty much gotten them under control now.
bro...
. What a sight! Boat wasn't quite 90 degrees when I finally woke up. 
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