When Ratty Comes Marching Home Again

Grand­par­ents are rat mag­nets. At least, that is the con­clu­sion I am rapid­ly com­ing to. As faith­ful read­ers no doubt recall, we had rat prob­lems when my in-laws last vis­it­ed (cri­sis, cli­max, ambigu­ous con­clu­sion).

Any­way, back to the present: my moth­er is vis­it­ing and we have anoth­er rat to con­tend with. We saw evi­dence about a week ago but we set out some poi­son in a child-inac­ces­si­ble loca­tion and the rat con­sumed a lot of it. We assumed it was dead, but today we saw its tail while prepar­ing lunch.

We were mind­ing our own busi­ness when my moth­er noticed a humon­gous rat tail stick­ing out from beneath the dish­wash­er. It was larg­er than a very large worm and small­er than a small snake. Prob­a­bly about 7 inch­es long. Assum­ing it was­n’t moon­ing us I’ll assume a tail length of around 8 or 9 inch­es total.

Paula is less than pleased. I think she views it as a per­son­al insult to her home­mak­ing skills. I pre­fer to think of it as part of a larg­er eco­log­i­cal issue involv­ing our apart­ment com­plex, the weath­er, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing a her­met­i­cal­ly sealed apart­ment.

But Paula is on the warpath. To delve fur­ther into cliche, it’s on.

updat­ed 11/7/2005 to soothe the sav­age beast that is fam­i­ly

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