Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Not such a tall tale after all

Maybe Eduardo's story about the plague of rats in Bigastro wasn't too far fetched.

The economic crisis and the demise of the construction industry has brought about an increase in the rat population.  In  Alicante, for example, it is estimated that there are now 231,000 rats (roughly 0.7  of a rat per head of population).

It isn't just rats though that are a problem; there are mosquitoes, processional caterpillars and even bees to control.

At the school where I taught, we had a problem with rabbits that were breeding under the mobile classrooms. You wouldn't see them during the day when the children were in school but in the evenings and at the weekends they'd come out into the yard.

Our solution was to buy a gun. Of course we didn't tell the staff; nor did we tell the Headteacher and the Chair of Governors.

At the weekends, the site managers and the CDT technician would sit in wait for the little perishers to hop out from under the portacabins and then pop them off. Mondays they would let me know the score.

Maybe, instead of using all the gunpowder for Moors and Christian celebrations, they could use some of it to exterminate the rats.  

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