The RAT

This post is something I have to write about in order to purge it completely from my mind. I won't even pretend that it's interesting or funny, I will only warn you - it's gross. Plus there is absolutely no knitting in this post - mostly it's just cathartic for me.

So the first night we were in the new old house we picked up Subway for dinner. I had ordered a cookie (big surprise) but it was really gross and stale so I didn't eat it. I left it on the kitchen counter as we didn't have a trash can at the time. The next morning, when we showed up for the actual move, the cookie was on the floor, with a good size hole in the bag. (Side note - not much of the cookie was eaten, so clearly my little vermin friend thought it was nasty too.) We figured there were mice that were stirred up with the move or something so we set some glue traps out - didn't catch anything or see anything strange for the first week so we kind of just forgot about it and moved the glue traps out of the way of the dogs - poor Fender has fallen prey to one before and while hilarious, it's kind of a mess to clean up.

Fast forward to the first full weekend we were in the house - the husband was out of town at a friend's bachelor party, leaving me alone at the house. Now a little back story: I have all types of neurosis, but mostly they all center around the same thing and that's being alone at night. I've never lived alone - moved from a house with 6 people, to a dorm with a few hundred, to an apartment with 3, to another house with 3, then 2 apartments with 2, then a house with 3, and now a house with just me and the Hubby and the dogs...needless to say, I can count the number of nights I've spent in an empty house on probably 2 hands. So after a fun filled day of shopping and dining with my dear friend Chelsea I come home to a dark empty house, let the dogs out, and proceed on my neurotic path of turning on every light in every room and inspecting every nook and cranny for lurking bad guys.

So I make my way back to my Closet Room (pics soon), flip the light on, and hear *rustle rustle rustle - PLOP - scurry* Imagine, if you will, the PLOP to be something about the same weight as a large somewhat clumsy kitten. I am silent, b/c what's the point of screaming if no one is there to hear you anyway, right? Then the little bugger pokes his RAT head around a box - no, not a mouse, a RAT - he draws back immediately, probably just as scared of me as I am of him. I then back my way into the living room, stand in the middle of the room and begin making panicked phone calls, as that is the only course of action that initially occurs to me. First I call the hubby, who doesn't answer b/c like I said, he was at a BACHELOR party...so naturally he's a little tied up, then Chelsea - she managed to calm me down to the point where I could walk past the closet room and into my bedroom and curl up, fully clothed, in the middle of my bed - then my mother, who proceeded to freak out as much as I had. My dad was in the background shouting out suggestions on how to catch the R.O.U.S. (rat of unusual size - b/c by now he was no longer the size of a rat, but more like a small pony), which included a 5 gallon Gott cooler, a suspended strip of bacon, a newspaper with a slit in it, and a yard stick....none of which I possessed and even if I did - LIKE I was gonna get up off of that bed with a RAT roaming the house! So I manage to put myself to bed - still fully clothed as all my clothes and pajamas are in the closet room with the RAT.

At about 2:30 a.m. I wake up to the sound of two glue traps falling to the ground (we had them up on some boxes, out of Fender's path). Truthfully, kind of glad I saw the rat, b/c the idea of an actual human invader bursting into my house at 2:30 never entered my mind. So the next morning Mom calls as I'm waking up. Between the two of us we decide that I HAVE to get out of bed, I have dogs that need to pee and are probably pretty hungry. So I prepare myself - I figure of the 4 glue traps, if he knocked down 2, surely he's on one of them and I was hearing his final struggle or something. Oh no. I let the dogs out and then inspect the traps...the little Houdini managed to get a tuft of hair stuck to one of the traps, but that's all! I saw imprints of his mammoth paws and tail in the glue and was totally grossed out. He actually managed to eat a good amount of the bait on the traps (peanut butter and dog kibble). From this - I determine that the little f-er is smarter than the average f-er. Oh joy, just what everyone wants in their home, a SMART RAT.

Since I conclude that the rat was definitely in the kitchen, and had moved out of my closet room I manage to talk myself into getting dressed and leaving the house till it was time to get Tom from the airport. To be fair, I don't think the rat hung out in my closet room for long - no droppings or anything so one can only assume, right?

So once I'm teamed back up with the hubby, I'm feeling pretty good - a little brave even. Don't get me wrong, every time I walked into a room I would flick the lights and yell "Rat, rat, RAT!" Not like - hey honey, here's the rat - but like in a menacing scary way that I hoped would scare the rat away...I don't know, doesn't make a ton of sense but it made me feel a little better and more in control of the situation so no judgement please.

We make our way over to our friendly neighborhood Lowes and pick up a few of the old time-y snap traps. We were pumped, like tonight is the night and I'll be able to resume unpacking the house without constant fear that every box was harbouring little vermin surprises. We do our best, google how to set the darn thing, bait it, then go to bed in anticipation of the imminent rat death that would soon occur.

Yeah right.


I mentioned our rat was smarter than the average rat, right? Well somehow this rat managed to LICK THE TRAP CLEAN and not trip it. How? HOW??? I mean, peanut butter is some sticky stuff, so part of me was totally impressed with this rat, like even if it wasn't a trap, to lick it CLEAN is pretty impressive. We figure we set the trap wrong, Hubby figures out a better way and we set it and go to work...we come home to nothing. Apparently our guy is completely nocturnal.


Monday night me and the hubby could hardly wait to go to bed - well we were tired, but also b/c we had a gut feeling that this was our little rat friend's last night terrorizing our house. Finally, we were right. At about 3 am we both jolt upright in bed to what sounds like a gunshot in the kitchen. We hear a few rustles...then silence. Hubby gets up, shaking with glee, and sure enough - the rat. Trapped Wicked Witch of the West style with just his little feet and part of his face sticking out from the over-turned trap. I was asked to identify the body, just to make sure. It was him.

Our rat was dead.

Our rat IS dead.

Neither Tom, nor I went back to sleep that night, we were so jazzed. Well, Tom was jazzed - I was a little sad. I wish I could have just removed him from the house...truthfully I didn't mind his existence, just his presence in my home. I'm sure the little guy had a perfectly nice home before he wandered into mine (I can only assume he made his way in while doors were open during all the moving fun, probably the old tenant moving out) and he probably would have very much liked to return to it. Guess we'll never know. I do know I actually feel a modicum of guilt about his demise. Poor guy.

Not gonna lie though, I'm mostly just glad that my house is rat free.

We haven't seen so much as a dropping since then, so we feel like we're in the clear for now. Who knows though...with Ike there could be all sorts of thing seeking refuge in and around our house, just waiting for a chance to sneak in to my closet room and freak me out.

Ugh.