We've been (w)ronged!

Winter in a rural area is always a time of movement...
our meadow, as you can see from the previous post's pictures, is not a good place for an underground...
or even undergrowth...
existence.
As I type I can see an ever growing molehill appearing beside our Viburnum...
a mole is a rare critter this side of the bridge, but they aren't equipped with gills, so a migration is demanded...
just hope it doesn't damage the roots.

It is bigger now!!

But that would be nothing to the damage that has just been done to our electrics...
especially the phone line...

A rongeur... most likely a rat...
has got into the space between the two floors and had been visiting our cellier to scavenge...
in the first instance potatoes... until we moved them to safer, reasonably rodent proof place...
it wouldn't respond to a live trap...
baited first with a hunk of spud...
then with chocolate...
the latter irresistible [allegedly]...
whilst I have been trying to discover where it was getting in.

I blocked off the access from the barn... again!
It is the major point of weakness...
the place where the barn wall was breached to bring the services into the house.
This is probably the original point of entry...
blocked once, and the soft limestone  at the side now dug away!
But, due to the design of the house, they could have a route in via the loft!!

Still we had visits...
and heard scratching in the walls...
aaaaAAARGH...
the night time scratching...
not conducive to a good rest!

And it had been visiting the cellier....
I blocked holes that I found with some scraps of the hemp insulation that is between the plasterboard and the original wall....
that showed me two places where the rat had got in again by its disappearance.
I blocked those off more permanently...
so I thought...
and then we lost the 'phone line and my thoughts turned to the damned ex-Christmas tree that had been planted outside the front door of the longére many, many years previously...
the 'phone line runs through that tree....
close inspection showed a branch pushing down on the cable between the post and the house...
nothing to do but wait for the engineers...
and for me to remove the branch and let the cable run loose again...

Or, so I thought...
I had gone over to the longére yesterday to open up the grenier so that they would have easy access when they arrived...
and the 'phone rang... WHAT!!
It was  one of the engineers...
so it wasn't the cable into the house...
that meant it wasn't their problem, but ours...
and that means money...
but they have the necessary test equipment...
and wire, too!

I busied myself getting other points accessible...
like the point of entry of the cables into the house...
yes, you've got it...
THAT point of entry...
the entire fuse box and house cable run is there too!

Having cleared the corner so that I could remove the section of worktop just there, I looked up at the back of the cable run and saw that, like the Alien from John Hurt, something had exploded from the back...

An 'ole...

So I took that cover off... and yessss!! Bingo...
the rongeur had been there...
and had chewed the phone line to bits at the distribution block...
I took the cover off the cable run to give them access to the phone line...
and discovered that, down at the bottom, greater havoc had been wreaked...

It sat here while it gnawed, and gnawed!

Well nibbled... but nothing severed!

But at the bottom... havoc! [New hole to barn is visible at the left!]

This is the Ethernet cable.. still passing data... fortunately!
It is a 60 metre continuous run!

As you can see from the above pictures, it had nibbled at the shielded Ethernet cable linking our computers between the buildings, as well as totally destroying the the phone cable just there...
it had also had a go at the power lines to a plug socket and a light...
somewhere!!

Insulation stripped... now repaired!!

As much as I hate using something like this, the poison is now down and waiting!!

Overnight, nothing has changed...

I will spend the morning re-insulating the intranet cable with clear nail varnish, before wrapping it again with some cling film and then kitchen foil to re-shield it...
then I will split some 'gain' as a covering and fix it over the two cables...
then I might be able to start on the things that I was intending to do yesterday!!
Like making nestboxes...

The "smell chequer" wants me to replace "rongeur" with "Roger"... 

as in "we've been Rogered" perhaps!? 

APT!!

---ooo000OOO000ooo---

Other observations.....
We've now had 115mm of rain this year.....
but earlier today the Hen Harrier gave a fly past and the valley's Great White Egret was hunting frogs in our meadow.