Of Mice and Men

And in other fascinating news this week, while Allen writes to you from Taekwondo Monday night, I’m at home with….a rat. No kidding. Like, the actual rodent. And this is NOT one we acquired at a pet store. Seriously, we’ve never dealt with pests on this level this before. We know it happens. But to other people, right?

We first saw evidence of this animal a couple of weeks ago when I noticed a hole had been chewed in my bag of potting soil in the laundry closet on our balcony. I called the apartment office and the leasing agent is our downstairs neighbor, and she had experienced the very same thing with her potting soil. So, friendly maintenance man Tim brought over some sticky goo traps, and we all put them out, but the only thing we caught in the two weeks was my foot as I stepped back into it while getting laundry out of the dryer. (And that goo was hard to wash off my foot, I might add.) We’re thinking we have just a little mouse, as we have a wooded area right next to our building. Makes sense.

In the middle of the night Saturday, I am awakened by loud clawing and biting noises in our KITCHEN. I wake up Allen, and he heads off into the kitchen, turning on lights, expecting to see a little mouse. Now, I’m thinking, “Do you have a plan? If you see something, what are you going to do? This isn’t exactly like killing a spider. Can you actually bring yourself to conk it on the head?” (Drat Disney and Pixar for personifying and cutifying small furry vermins.) Well, of course, he doesn’t see anything cuz the animal goes and hides. He comes back to bed, we fall asleep, only to be woken up 10 minutes later by the same noise. This goes on a couple more times till it finally stops. We get up Sunday morning to see small bits of kitchen cabinet on the floor. I mention this to my friend Margaret who informs me we have something more than a mouse, because mice don’t eat/chew cabinets. Great.

Then, Sunday night, after Stephen is in bed and Allen and I have settled down to check out the latest campaign garbage on TV (why we torture ourselves watching this stuff, I don’t know) we hear loud scratching and clawing noises in the kitchen again, this time from under the dishwasher. This goes on for about 30 minutes, escalating into loud ripping noises. Whatever it is, it’s having fun making a cozy nest under there. We bring the goo traps in from the laundry room and put them on the kitchen floor. Allen goes to bed. I’m sitting at the table working on bills, all is quiet, and THEN, a dark gray, 6-inch rodent darts across the living room floor, under the TV. This ain’t no mouse. I get Allen (not calmly, either), and we try to make a chute by putting our (still) unpacked boxes around the TV in such a manner that if he decides to come out, the only direction he can get out is the front door. But it’s 50 degrees outside and 70 under the TV. Would you come out? He pokes his little nose out from under the TV a couple of times, scampers around behind there and tells us we’re crazy if we think he’s going outside. Thirty minutes later, we defeatedly go to bed, but not before putting a goo trap around our setup, with pieces of macaroni from dinner on it.

Monday morning we wake up to find…..not a rodent stuck on a trap, but all the pieces of macaroni gone. Uh huh, he’s laughing at us now, all cuddled up in his dishwasher-insulation nest, thanking us for dinner, wondering what we’ll serve tomorrow night. I tell my downstairs neighbor leasing agent about our adventures, she agrees it’s a rat (and shivers as she says “ulgh”) and sends Tim over to set a snap trap. Now, regular mouse traps are what, 1” X 3”? This thing is the size of a small book, and it goes under the kitchen cabinet near the dishwasher hose hole, loaded up with peanut butter. So, now we wait. Of course, after all this brouhaha, we’ve heard nor seen nothing of Mr. Ratatouille since Monday and it’s now Wednesday. Did he go out the door, adventuring into the big world, visiting friends in a van down by the river? Is he traipsing around to all his penthouse nests in other apartments? Will he return when we least expect it? We’ll let you know. But for now, I guess we can add having a rat in our apartment to our “New Experiences in California” list.

Becky