Kitchen Pests

Years ago, I dealt with two major ant invasions into my kitchen within a short period of time. In each case, we'd neglected to clean up the dirty kitchen the night before. Thus was born a new rule:

Never leave dirty dishes overnight.

This seemed to solve the problem as we never had ants in the kitchen again, there or in subsequent homes. No matter how tired we were, the kitchen had to be cleaned up before bed.

However, we have a new breed of kitchen pests. They are large, have just four legs, and are covered in fur. One variety has a long, powerful tail but the other only has a stump. Yes, I am talking about my rotten dogs.


This little Angel, sleeping on her very own sheets (used to cover the recliners at night), likes bread. We first discovered the nature of this pest after leaving several loaves of store-bought bread on a table while taking care of other things. A short while later, half a loaf of bread was found on the floor. Luckily, she hadn't had time to destroy them all. I believe she snagged some bread another time, but she has little opportunity any more as any bread is put high out of her reach.

While this doesn't sound like a big deal, it is rather inconvenient when I've baked anything. If I am not going to be in the immediate kitchen area, the cooling rack and bread has to go up on top of a high shelf or on the refrigerator.


I intentionally did not fix the red eye in this photo of the other kitchen pest because it reflects Polie's true devilish nature. We suspect he may have been fed people food at meals as he tries to give us his best sad, "I'm starving!" look when we are eating. He does not actively beg, but I'm sure he wouldn't turn down a morsel if offered.

The challenge with this type of kitchen pest is the length of the legs. His head is already almost at counter height so we must be careful to not leave food near the edges. He had not indicated an interest in trying to steal counter food, but given the opportunity and some inattention on our part, I wouldn't put it past him.

I also keep a piece of plywood clamped onto the front of our food shelves in the kitchen. I have such inadequate cabinet space that I have to put the food on an open steel shelf unit. I don't know if he'd try to get into any of this food, but I don't want to take chances.

Especially not after yesterday. I baked cornbread in the solar oven yesterday and barely had time to cool it before heading out to the CSA. I removed it from the cast iron skillet and left it on a cooling rack for half an hour. As I was getting ready to leave, I saw the bread and remembered to put it away. I did not, however, clean up the crumbs left behind. I looked at the crumbs in the skillet and wondered to myself if I should clean it but I didn't have time.

The reason the skillet was a concern is that Angel is a climber. At least once before, she jumped on a chair on the other side of the kitchen counter to get up to a table and then up to the counter. She wound her way around things on the counter to get to the stove where she evidently stepped in the dirty skillet. We know this because she left pawprints on the counter due to the burnt flour residue left in the skillet. Since then, we've either moved that chair away from the table or tipped it so she couldn't climb up.

She has a sore back leg this week, though, so I didn't think she'd be jumping up. However, when my sweetie got home, he found the cooling rack and a plastic spatula on the floor. The utensil was chewed up. No footprints in sight and nothing knocked over on the counter. There was no way Angel could have gotten over to the stove without knocking something over.

There was only one explanation. Polie knocked the rack off the stove.

There is a new rule in the house, one that will make my life busier:

Never leave the dogs alone with a dirty kitchen.

Usually we leave the day's dishes until evening so we only have to wash dishes once a day. This saves water as well as the energy to heat the water. This saves me energy as I can often persuade my sweetie to wash all the dishes for me.

No more. Any time I go out during the week and any time we both head out on the weekend without the dogs, the kitchen will have to be cleaned first. I suspect I'll be doing a lot of dishes from now on. I think a key feature I'd like in our own home will be a separate kitchen with a door, unlike this one which is open on both ends.