Rats! Part 2: Return of the Rats
I don’t think I ever went into the full gory details of the rat problem. Not because there weren’t gory details. And not because I wanted to spare you from the nausea that would ensure from hearing said details. Nope. I just had to wait until the problem was fixed. A rat infestation is only funny in retrospect. Believe me.
It all started one day when my friend Jason said he thought we had rats. Well…wait. Back up a bit. It all started when the fucking rats moved in and started living in our walls. Jason was the first to point out that he had seen them running around outside. I blame our downstairs neighbor, Sunja, for that. She had cats. Outdoor ones. They were undoubtedly keeping the rats away. Then she left. And we got vermin. Mike claimed he had seen something scurry across our floor one day, but since that’s the same roommate who leaves pots boiling on the stove while he leaves to go to the grocery store for twenty minutes, I tend to not listen to him or respect his judgement. Sure enough, he turned out to be right.
Our landlord came over and set up traps. I wanted humane ones that would keep it alive. I had visions of waking up one morning, finding a poor trapped creature inside one of those boxes, and walking him down to the river to set him free. He’d jump onto the ground and look at me. Cock his head to the side as if to say “Thank You!” Then he’d scamper off having learned his lesson. Oh, and his lost sister was singing “Somewhere Out There.” But no. Dave brought over the snapping kind. You know. The original mouse trap. The kind that Sylvester always ended up getting covered in every time he tried to catch Tweety. Hey, let’s see how many cartoon mouse references I can make!
I was weary of using this loud, disturbing, insta-kill contraptions. But the only other options were either let rats peruse around are house at all unoccupied hours of the day, or go buy my own traps - which would require both looking like a pussy and spending my own money. The snap traps would be fine, thanks.
A few days went by and we didn’t catch anything. We had two traps. Both were in the kitchen, by the hole we were sure that rat was coming in through. One morning, Mike woke up to find a dead rat in the middle of the floor. Not the kitchen floor. The dining room floor. He had someone set off the trap, become mortally wounded, and like a Shakespearean death scene, wandered aimlessly before collapsing to the ground. But not before he bled all over the fucking kitchen floor. A disgusting dark red trail weaving around the linoleum - even on the fridge door - like one of those annoying Family Circus cartoons where they show what a roundabout and asinine route those goddamn kids took to get home from school. I cleaned the blood, Mike picked up the rat, and Jim threw it out. Teamwork.
A week later, I came into my room at night to see a rat run across my floor into a hole under the closet. Fuck. So of course I slept in the living room. The next day, I found mouse droppings in my bed. Now…I don’t say this to be gross or disturb you. I say it to teach you a lesson. The second you see a rodent in your bedroom, lose the fucking bed skirt. Yeah. Rat shit. In my bed. That’s when I had enough and decided we were moving. Can you blame me? Rat. Shit. In. My. Bed. Everyone agreed with me about moving. Everyone except Mike, of course. He didn’t think such a rash decision should be made just because I was having “a bad week.”
Rat
Shit
In
My
Bed.
Dave the landlord came and boarded up all the holes in my bedroom and after a good week or so of sleeping on the coach after that, I finally worked up the nerve to start sleeping in there again. I still have dreams every few days that there are rats running around my room trying to get into bed with me. Hey, so who wants to come visit?
After that, we found another rat in the kitchen. Turns out we were wrong about the hole we found. They were getting in through another gaping one behind the oven. So we had that closed up. Then the landlord called an exterminator and they plugged more holes and put poison all over the outside of the building where they were getting in and out. Also, we got a new neighbor who has an outside cat. Now…i can say with 85% certainty…no more rat!
