Blog #2: Rat Deja Vu!
That's right, a rat. But to understand the rat, you must first understand the nice little patio we have with trees, where we hang bird feeders. A flock of dove's, hummingbirds, and little birds, some with little red heads, frequent the patio and enjoy the food. But it seemed amazing how quickly they went through the food.
Until we spotted the squirrels! That's right squirrels crawl up the tree and tentatively make their way down the rope to the bird feeder and chomp! Well that prompted a purchase: Rat Deterrent which is immensely successful, while I'm out there. But the squirrels are not what this blog is about! It is the rats!
The Rats!
So there we were, late at night, getting crazy with the Karaoke, when we noticed our cat was fixated on something in the patio. Upon closer inspection, we saw this movement in the tree! Three little rats running up to eat the bird food!We let the cat out, and with nerf soaker in hand, I fired my shots! Nothing seemed to happen. But soon, at the window, we found:
The cat had caught a rat! This was very exciting, so exciting that my wife let the cat in! Well I screeched like a little girl (I had bare feet and was expecting rat trouble) and sure enough, the cat let the rat loose, and it scurried under the couch.
Cat! The rat is not dead! Well this prompted a lot of action. We had to find this rat! We looked under the couch, but it was nowhere to be found! In all the commotion, did it make its way past us, unseen, into the further corners of the house? Was it going to crawl on us during our sleep! Ack!
We started to take apart the couch. A three piece sectional. Piece by piece, first the right section, then the left section, at this point, we got a glimpse of it! The rat was hiding in the corner section!
The Corner Section
Now, carefully, I quickly lifted the corner section to one side, expecting this little rat to dart out where my wife waited with a basket to trap it in, but the little guy went the wrong way! He went right where I lifted the corner section:
This was pretty funny, you could see his little rat butt wiggling in the air. Now I could have crushed him, but wife said no. We soon trapped him in the upside down wicker wastebasket. But this presented a dilemma - how to dispose of the rat. But surprisingly, a dilemma I had faced before, suddenly, I realized I was experiencing rat deja vu!
Rat Deja Vu
In grad school I lived in a house with five guys. That's right! Five Guys Burgers was not the first five guys! Gawd I love those burgers! But not as much as a burger from The Counter with pesto sauce, but I diverge, burgers will have to be the subject of another blog...Anyways, this house with these five guys was not that tidy, and at some point we developed a rat problem. One night Matt and I were sitting around watching the Simpsons or something, and a rat scurried by! We tracked it to the kitchen, under the refrigerator! We hatched a plan, it looked something like this:
We caught the rat! But now we had the dilemma, how to dispose of the rat! See, rat Deja Vu! There is something worth pointing out about this story - the plastic Tupperware storage unit that I captured the rat in had some interesting history. You see our roommate Kris left it on the stove. It is not good to leave plastic on the stove if someone turns on the stove:
So this Tupperware had a little hole in it. The Tupperware lid was intact and we soon maneuvered the rat into the closed Tupperware.
The Rat End
How does this part of the story end? In the interest of building an internet image worthy of praise and appreciation, I allow you dear reader, to choose the ending that makes you most happy:- A home was made for the rat in the Tupperware, little bits of shredded newspaper were fed threw the hole to make a bed, bits of cheese and chocolate for sustenance
- The sweet boys let the innocent rat free outside to frolic in the grass
- The rat was treated as an equal, in time, it became, the "sixth" guy
- The boys, not wanting this rat to come back into their kitchen, disposed of it as humanely as possible
- An attempt at disposing of the rat was made, bravely the boys attempted to fling it into the toilet and flush it away, but during the fling it cling-ed to the little Tupperware hole, then leaped from one boy to the next, leaving disease and mayhem in its wake, and finally asserted sovereignty over the space under the refrigerator, all who once opposed it were now to fearful to interfere with its way of life
- The hole in the Tupperware was plugged, the rat slowly suffocated, its little rat cries still haunt the plugger
- The rat was drowned in the sink, by slowly letting water from the faucet flow through the little hole in the Tupperware.
More Rat Deja Vu
It turns out my wife had her own rat deja vu - it was in a house of two girls, it involved catching a rat in a box, a rat that went quiet and seemed to be dead. Slowly, the girls lifted the box, there was the little rat, looking quite dead, but then:
Even More Rat Deja Vu
Well, now its May 31, we're back from a vacation and guess what, the cat caughtAnyways, as before (I forgot to mention this) we let the rat out back (wife wouldn't let me dispose of it). Now before, the cat finally found the mouse after we let it out the back (I got to shake it up a bit in the wastebasket we trapped it in). Tonight, the cat's still out there - remember, this is clearly a lieutenant rat in the brigade! I shook it up quite a bit but it was still quite spry when I let it out!
Wait, the Wife has more to say...
OK, so there was more to the story...my husband deftly flipped over the recliner and peered into the upper corner underneath the armrest. With his REI camping headlamp we saw two beady eyes peering tentatively at us. Quickly, he got the nerf soaker, aimed at the little rat body, and shot! The rat quickly deflected the water by turning his little back towards the offensive shot, soaking his back. One more water shot sent him scurrying towards ME...waiting for him with the wastebasket. With slicked back rat fur on his head, he cautiously peeked his head out, looking both ways, as one does in traffic. His paused for a moment, as if weighing this vital decision. He JUMPED! Right towards me! Onto the floor he landed and only got a couple inches when I pounced with my basket over his little rat water soaked body!Comments
Couldn't you just release the rat back into the wild...somewhere away from home? I hate the bit about suffocating the rat back in grad school. Eeeee!
Hmmm...my husband has a somewhat rose colored glasses picture of me....I highly doubt I was wearing a hot pink miniskirt during this rat escapade!
But his story is dead on!
This is super funny! I like the flashbacks!
Lol this is awesome stuff!!!!! <3 it! Is that rach?