Oh, rats!

 The title of this piece has nothing to do with a common expression of frustration from Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang.

Rather, it has to do with literal mice.

It all started when Matthew came running to me one morning, saying, “I saw a rat in the kitchen!” 

I followed him, asked him where he’d seen it, and he pointed towards a corner of the kitchen.  I looked there, couldn’t see it, but I was sure he’d seen something.

Next, I started noticing teeth marks in the bananas we kept out on the counter. 

Finally, while sitting in the living room one evening, I saw a nose, whiskers, eyes and ears poke themselves out from behind our small couch. I said, “Oh, hello. Glad to meet you.” He turned around and ran back behind the couch. 

I nicknamed the creature Jimmy Cagney, as in, “You dirty rat!” (This is probably a good place to mention that Cagney the actor never said, “You dirty rat!” in any of his movies. The closest he came was in the 1932 movie “Taxi!”, where he yelled to his brother’s killer through a locked closet: “Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat, or I’ll give it to you through the door!”)

We set out some mousetraps, and one of them caught Jimmy Cagney. 

End of problem, right?

Uh . . .wrong.

I started noticing teeth marks in the bananas a few days later. I begged my husband, can we PLEASE call an exterminator? 

At the same time, we both started seeing rats skittering across the floor. Yes, that was “rats” in plural.

The exterminator came out, explored the house, and informed us that we had rats because he could tell by their droppings. Among other things, he told us that our crawlspace was full of rat droppings. 

Gee, thanks.

He scheduled a date for the team to come out, gave me the cost, which promptly went on the credit card. Sorry, Dave Ramsey, but this was a case where we NEEDED the credit card.

In the next few days and weeks, I saw two rats race around the house, mostly in the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Before I realized there had been rats in the house, I’d found two neatly arranged piles of dryer lint, one in the downstairs bathroom, the other in a corner of the kitchen. (Hey, even rats want comfortable places to sleep.)  I also saw one mouse scurry up the stairs. I don’t know where he/she/it ended up.

When I discovered holes eaten in a pair of my jeans that I’d left in a laundry basket downstairs, I declared war.

I would have been willing to accept unconditional surrender and a humane execution at this point, allowing said rats blindfolds and final cigarettes and maybe a final kiss from a loved one. 

But the final straw came when one rat skittered from behind the small living room couch into a corner of the dining room, skittered back into the living room and under the small couch . . . and then skittered out from under the small couch, towards the big couch — where I was sitting — and headed STRAIGHT FOR MY FEET.

I jumped up, grabbed my iPad, which I was using to chat with my BFF, and ran upstairs. 

That was the moment where I decided I would accept nothing but complete and total annihilation and obliteration.

I named the rats Ben and Willard, after two horror movies from the 1970’s featuring killer rats. I have no idea if they’re both male, both female, or one of each, and I refuse to get close enough to find out. 

They have put teeth marks in my bananas, they have taken a nice big bite out of an apple, and a nice big bite out of a potato. Putting out mousetraps for them did not work. These rats are too smart for that. In fact, they are so smart that they managed to knock down a box of crackers from the top of my pantry! 

They’ve skittered across the kitchen floor under the stove. 

And, on Halloween day, while I was in the bathroom, one of them slithered under the crack in the bathroom door! I gasped and it turned around and went out. (It would have been appropriate if I had squeaked.) 

Well, today, the cavalry has arrived. 

As I write this, the extermination company we hired is going around the house, sealing the entry points and setting traps. They will come back on the 22nd to see how well the traps have worked. 

This time, the rats will be the ones getting it through the door!

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.