Construction Journal Entry Week of 7/22/12

7/24-26/12 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way I stopped and visited with Charles over lunch. I didn't have lunch there but I visited with him while he ate his. We had a nice conversation.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 2:10, had my lunch, and a short nap. I was awakened by the sounds of one or more packrats at the top of the gable wall just above my bed. They are getting aggravating.

I went to work on the porch ceiling, nailed up the rest of the 11th course and part of the 12th course. At one point I saw a packrat run down the wall, over to a hole in the porch deck, and then disappear below the deck. The noise of my nailing must have woken him up because they typically are not out and about during the day.

When I went in for the night my left shoulder was hurting pretty bad. I think I am flirting with repetitive stress injury from lifting boards and nailing up over my head. Good thing I'll soon be done with that. In the meantime I'll do my shoulder exercises which I know fixes the problem.

About 3 AM I was awakened by the sound of a packrat making a lot of noise. I got up, followed the sound and discovered that the packrat was chewing on the outside vent hood for the bathroom exhaust fan. I turned the fan on and the noise stopped. I turned it on a second time and let it run for a while. Then I went back to bed and didn't hear any more noise from there.

On Wednesday I started out by watering all the giant sequoia trees. Then I went to work and nailed up the 12th and part of the 13th courses of ceiling boards. Then I had my lunch and a nap.

Since I had scaffolds set up so that I could inspect the top of the Grid E1 corner, I went up to see if I could find a hole where the packrats could get in between those rafters. To my dismay, I couldn't find any. The screens covering the openings seemed to be intact with no way for a packrat to get in. I figured they must be getting in from the other end. I would really like to evict them from the gable wall before I finish installing the ceiling boards all the way around the building because that won't be done for a while.

I finished nailing up all but the last course of boards over the porch. The remaining space is just a little wider than one board—from about a half-inch to one inch. I'm not sure what to do to fill the gap.

It occurred to me that I should install another set of vents in this space. The roof over the porch is hollow whereas the roof over the cabin is stuffed with insulation. So there is a lot of hot air in the porch roof that rises up and hits the birdblocks with the relatively small vents in their tops. It seems like it would be a good idea to vent this hot air at the top of the porch even though it would come out under the roof. It could still get out by flowing sideways. I thought about how I might fashion the vents using window screen and hardware cloth.

I decided not to do any more on the ceiling until I figured out what to do. A chipmunk showed up several times during the day for peanuts. The rodents are sure a lot more likeable if they have stripes.

At about 3 AM I was awoken again by packrat noise and I lay awake thinking about what to do. Then it dawned on me that the electronic rodent repellers just might work to drive them out. I went down to the porch, got the two repellers I had set up down there, got a couple of extension cords, and taped the two repellers up against the rafters over the gable wall and plugged them in. I went back to bed and didn't hear much more packrat noise.

On Thursday morning I was in for a surprise. When my eyes had cleared enough to see, I noticed something unusual on the loft floor. On closer inspection I discovered it was the body of a dead packrat pup. Looking further, I saw that there were four of them evenly spaced in a line from the gable wall over to the mousetrap and a couple peanuts set out near the mousetrap.

It was clear that no adult packrats or even any mice had gotten in, otherwise the peanuts would be gone and the mousetrap would have been sprung. Yet here were those tiny little pups.

It didn't make sense that they had dropped from holes in the ceiling Visqueen because first of all there were no holes in the Visqueen, and secondly it wouldn't make sense that each of the four of them got in between a different set of rafters and fell through.

After thinking about it, the only explanation that made sense to me was that the electronic repellers had driven the adults away. This left the pups with no mother and no milk. They evidently went looking for their mother and found a small hole through which they could drop down into the loft and onto the floor.

From there it looks like they crawled toward the mousetrap and they died on the way. If that's the case, it is amazing to think that they could have smelled the peanut bait at that young age. The only other explanation is that they just happened to travel in that direction.

At any rate I cleaned up the little carcasses feeling a little bad for the little guys, but feeling good that the repellers were so effective, assuming I had things figured out right. I'll leave the repellers on permanently and next week I should be able to tell if the packrats are back in or still out. If they are still out, that will give me some much appreciated time to get the ceilings done all the way around.

Ellen called in the morning with some requests related to a family camping trip we are planning for the weekend. She wanted me to get some cots, check to see whether fires are allowed in the campground, and get some firewood if the answer is yes.

I called the Parkside Grocery and learned that fires are OK. Then I split a wheelbarrow full of firewood and hauled that and two cots down to the truck.

When I got back, I climbed up the log projections at the Grid A1 corner of the cabin to see if I could see how the packrats got in that end. I couldn't see any way. Then I got an extension ladder and put it up against the Grid 1 wall near the corner and looked for ways in along that stretch. I found nothing. I decided not to spend any more time trying to evict the packrats now that I think I might already have done so with those repellers. The focus instead will be on getting the ceiling installed.

By the time I put the ladder away, I was super hot and sweaty. It was about 11:00 so I swept the porch off good, had my lunch and left for home at about 12:45. It had been a productive week.



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