Apple Eating Critter Story

Once upon a time…Yep this is how the apple eating critter story should start. S and I have been in denial for weeks now that something has been living in our air conditioner in our wet kitchen (just off the main kitchen and would traditionally be used by a maid to prep meals and clean up afterwards). How did we know something was living in our A/C?

It may be hard to tell from these photos what exactly you are looking at. This is the bottom of the A/C unit. The unit is installed directly into the wall near the ceiling. Somehow it is connected to the outside, but I’m not a technical person to tell you how this all works. All I know is that I have a remote control that turns the unit on and off and that I can adjust the temperature with. We have 7 of these units in our house (central A/C doesn’t exist here, but these units seem to work fairly well…of course, we haven’t been in the house during the DAMN HOT season yet). Anyway, the little chunks of stuff that you see are bits and pieces of I believe styrofoam. These little chunks have been falling out of the bottom of this one A/C now for probably around 6 weeks or so.

At first, we thought maybe ants or something like that was living in the A/C. The A/C works just fine, and besides the styrofoam, there weren’t any signs of anything wrong with the A/C…such as a critter living in it. Every few days or so, I would clean up the styrofoam. I think even for a week or so, nothing at all came out.

Well over the weekend, as more styrofoam was on the counter, I thought I should investigate the outside of the house to see if I could see anything. Well on the side of the house, I found a large wasps nest. Well after waking up Sunday night thinking that wasps were flying around the house, I decided that something needed to be done. So S had pest control come out on Monday.

Now, let me tell you about pest control. The guy came in and started applying cock roach bait to my cabinet hinges…hmm, we don’t have a cock roach problem (knock on wood). Then I had to point out every spot I wanted him to spray. I don’t know what kind of spray he was using, but I’m sure it had to be at least 99.9% gasoline…or at least, it smelt that way. I know I lost a few hundred brain cells sniffing it (not good, when I don’t have a lot of brain cells to begin with…after all, I’m the one living in India, and you have to be a few brain cells short to be able to handle life here). Then to top it off, pest control fogged our yard for mosquitoes while it was raining. I’m not an expert on pest control, but I’m pretty sure when it’s raining is not the time to be fogging the yard.

Anyway, this brings us up to Tuesday morning when I found the apple. I was pretty sure S hadn’t ate it as we don’t eat the skins of fruits when we are in Asia…much safer to peel all fruits and vegetables or to cook them. I called S to just make sure…I was right he hadn’t touched the apple. Now, I must tell you that the entire time we have lived in our house, we have always had fruit sitting in a bowl on our counter. Ants don’t touch it, and up until now we haven’t had a problem.

Well it is not a good thing to find a half eaten apple…especially since I’m pretty sure geckos don’t have teeth…or at least not teeth that would leave the very clear cut marks that were on this apple. Pretty much leaves only a few things…either a mouse, a rat, a squirrel, a raccoon, or a chipmunk.

I’m not scared of mice…and I am pretty sure this is a mouse. S thinks it is a rat. Anyway, I was determined to catch this apple eating critter. So, in our house, I have one mouse trap that was accidentally shipped instead of going into storage…plus I have a couple of sticky traps (hoping to catch geckos, but no luck so far). Anyway, I bait the traps with chunks of the apple. Plus I leave the remainder of the apple in the same bowl as the night before.

Well, we wake up Wednesday morning to find that whatever we have has in fact got caught in one of the sticky traps. Unfortunately, whatever it is has also managed to somehow free itself from the sticky trap. Not good as these traps are pretty sticky (I know since I stuck my finger in one by accident and had a hard time getting it off). Therefore, my guess of this being a little bitty mouse goes out the window. Whatever it is was big enough to get itself off of the trap (the trap was upside down on the floor). Plus, there is a footprint in the sticky trap. Unfortunately, I never was a hunter or animal tracker, so I have no clue what kind of creature the footprint belongs to.

Time for Plan B…call in pest control again...and let's hope this "once upon a time" story has a happy ending.