A big shout out to my husband who spotted this on the lawn when he got home from work today:
And rather than just ignoring it and walking past, as any of the rest of the family would have done, he picked it up, recognized the name of the people who do general fixing up around our house as well as pest control written on the top, remembered that I was going to get someone in to deal with our mouse problem, put two and two together, and realized our dogs had just poisoned themselves.
Indeed, the men were here this very morning, and when they were putting the bait boxes down, my daughter asked them if it was safe “Our dogs come in here all the time, is it OK just to leave those on the floor like that?” “Yes, absolutely! These boxes are child and pet proof.” With a metaphorical pat on the head ‘don’t you worry your pretty little head about it my dear, we are the experts’.
My husband rang me, and I tried to ring the pest people, but office hours had just ended (at 2:45) so we couldn’t get hold of them. In the end it was an emergency trip to the vet, a dose of a morphine type drug to make them throw up, a couple of hours of observations, and then back home with a months worth of vitamin K (the antidote to warfarin type rat poison). They are running around quite happily now. A close shave though! At least one of them would have died.
Now the question is whether the pest people will bill us, pay the vet bill ($425), and/or apologize. I’ll keep you posted.