He said that we had done a good job on keeping rats & mice, cockroaches, ants and other pests out of his restaurant, and in fact he had recently passed a health inspection with flying colors, but there was one thing he was worried about, a strange looking bird with a very damaged beak was hanging around his patio tables and this “rat with wings” had gotten so comfortable with people, that it was becoming aggressive and was stealing food off the tables while the customers were having a meal.

Several people including the humane society, the bird lady and two other nuisance critter control/pest control companies had tried to get rid of this pest bird but were unsuccessful.

They had used mist nets (commonly used in bird control) hand nets, poison (something we rarely use) and various traps (ranging from rat traps to squirrel traps to raccoon traps) and the “rat with wings” just kept beating them at their own game.

We ordered a quesadilla and a falafel and sat down for lunch and sure enough, within a few minutes, a robin with a damaged beak (it looked like the rat with wings had been hit by a car and had broken its beak and the poor bird was reduced to only eating with its head at a weird angle) showed up and started being a bit of a pest. It was obvious that the bird was not doing well and I decided to try catching it by hand.

I borrowed some tortilla chips and used it as bait to lure our “rat with wings” closer and noticed that as it fed, it had to turn its head sideways which meant that for a split second, while the bird was pecking at the chip, it could not see much else so I knelt on the ground and used the bait to bring the bird closer and closer.

Finally, when the bird was about a foot away and was looking down at the bait, I swung both my hands closed around the body of the bird and caught him without hurting him in any way.

My customer and a few of his patrons were pretty impressed and we delivered the bird to the Bird Lady bird rescue in Maitland (by the way if you find an injured bird the Bird Lady bird rescue will help look at any of my websites such as critter911.com, rats911.com, squirrels911.com, raccoons911.com etc. Or search the bird lady on Google, yahoo, ask or live search for a link).

Any our “rat with wings” is in a good place and he will be well taken care of and our rodent and pest control customer has also signed up for an occasional humane bird repellant treatment.

We were pretty sure she was experiencing ghost rat or mouse hallucinations... this is where customers- especially those who are particular grossed out by the rats and mice in their attics, wall voids our under the home in a crawlspace actually interpret any sounds a previously rodent infested home makes as a sure signal that the rats or mice are back and they will chew or gnaw up their wires, ductwork or waterlines costing them tons of dollars in repairs... which means they call us at any hour of the day or night to let us know that they still have rats and to inquire as to what we are going to do about it.

We hired other companies to come out and inspect the home in the apopka-vineland area of Orlando just to see if a new set of eyes could discern a problem we missed, but we were gratified when all reports came up negative as to rats or mice remaining in the house.

But our customer kept hearing scurrying and scratching noises in the attic that she was sure was caused by a rat...

Now we have a perfect record when it comes to rat removal... and we were sure that we had gotten rid of all the rats as a good rat and mouse extermination company should, but every now and then a case comes along to test our rodent removal expertise... so we decided to place a video camera in the attic just to satisfy our customer and to put to bed once and for all the idea that she still had rats.

Wouldn't you know it, there was the rat (luckily just one) running through the picture giving us the finger... it wasn't ghost rat syndrome after all.

Our customer still had rats.

Over the next 3 days we tried everything to catch this insanely cautious rat but the rat won. he would not allow himself to be caught... and then we noticed that every time we saw the rat on the video, he was heading toward a box above the lady's bedroom by the entrance to the attic. we asked the lady about the box but she was adamant about the box and its content being in no way attractive to rats, but we pointed out that rats could find shelter in the box and as we were talking the lady's husband joined in and told us to search the box over the lady's objections.

upon searching the box, we found the reason for this rats resourcefulness, a 5lb box of Jordan Almonds (the lady's favorite snack) was hidden in the attic storage box. Our customer had been ordered by her husband and her doctor to loose some weight and lower her cholesterol and she was forced to give up the Jordan almonds as part of her forced diet and she was cheating on said diet by sneaking up to the attic and eating her favorite treat. Embarrassing for all concerned to say the least.

we removed the candy, put the storage box (complete with rat hole chewed in the bottom corner) back in the attic with a rat trap baited with a piece of Jordan almond and had our "Einstein rat" within 48 hrs.

now i can't eat Jordan almonds ever again.