It WAS a rat!

Ewww. Three men arrived at our house early this morning and cut a hole out of the area where the black mold has been growing. After about 1 hour I heard, from the comfort of our office, a man run out of the house like he was heaving and getting ready to vomit. That's not an unusual noise here because people often horque and heave like their life depended on it, and it isn't a pretty sound. However, this time it continued and when I poked my head out of the office door, the main maintenance guy said "mrs...mouse..." but I think it must have been a rat for all of the stink that we've endured over the last week and a bit. Tikus is a word for rat and mouse, by the way, so I'm going for the former descriptive. There were bits of fur on the floor that had fallen from the hole, so I am assuming that one of the assistants had to remove the carcass from the rat's grave. What is really weird is that the rat died in the same place as the mold had appeared a few months ago. Rats begin to decompose, especially in this heat, quite soon after they die, so we know that it hasn't been the cause of the mold. We're putting our money on it being a leak, seeing as there are streak marks all over our cement walls. My conclusion? The rat died from black mold poisoning. Thank the Lord that the maintenance guys have arrived!

Our plastic-covered main area (living room, tv room, dining room, rumpus room) You can't really see the streaking or mold (some of which has been cut out..the long rectangle is the rat graveyard...it's directly under the kids' shower)

It's our hope that once this is all over we can paint the walls a happy colour. There is an ACE hardware store here (American?) and they sell Dulux paint, which is probably the best available here. There is another option, and that is a powder based paint to which you add water. It's not very washable and it streaks, so we're going to go for the higher quality. Now the question is what colour are we going to go with? THIS is a time when I really need my girlfriends for their opinions.

Thanks for reading.