So, picture this. It's a quiet night. The kids are in bed. I'm ignoring the sink full of dishes (Sorry FlyLady) and we're playingToonTown Online. And, I can hear my old lab on the back deck agitating to come back inside. I don't let her in until the kids are asleep as The Boy Wonder finds it offensive if she walks in his room while he's trying to go to sleep. So, anyway, after about 20 min, I realize that the noises behind me probably aren't coming from Rosie. It's coming from my trash can. It's. something. alive. In. My. Trash. Can. Behind. Me. EEEEEEK! So, I turn slowly and yes, all the papers are moving on their own.
And, the worst part . . . I have bare feet!
I jump up and walk/run over to Mr Wonderful's desk and say to him. "There's something in my trash can." He replies, "Yes." (Perhaps he thought I was berating him for not emptying it on trash day or something. :)). I say, "No, you aren't getting me. There is something MOVING in my trash can." He jumps up -- he has socks on! -- and graps a lid to a plastic tub (a cute pink one I got at Office Max a couple of weeks ago). He puts it over the trashcan and picks the whole thing up. I have opened the back door to the office and he's heading that way when the rat -- which, of course it was -- manages to get out between the lid and the can and falls down on Mr Wonderful's socked feet. I am meanwhile trying to climb the stack of flat files I'm standing next to which is, of course, impossible. But, there is a very small battery charger on the ground there so I climb up on that (reinjuring my broken toe in the process) and do my very best 50's cartoon woman seeing a mouse impersonation. Mr Wonderful said later all I needed was pearls and a full skirt and the picture would have been perfect. [Click!] [Click!] The rat doesn't run out the open door 1 foot away from it . . . Nooooooo! It runs BACK INTO THE OFFICE. ACK! So, we find it's hole and block it off.
Next morning. . . Mr Wonderful goes and gets a bunch of rat traps. We'd seen rat signs around in various places so we knew this was coming(we've had rat wars before!). And, we bait them with peanut butter and place them around strategically. Now, setting a rat trap is a dangerous thing. As you are doing it, you can hear the Mission Impossible -- don't cut the red wire or the world will blow up -- music playing in the background. So, it's delicate work. And, the traps are very sensative and go off quite easily. The recommended procedure is to bait the traps for a day or so without setting them so that the rats get relaxed about their odd new food source and then you set them and voila! Dead rats.
Well, our rats are clever little buggers. The first day we actually set them, we found a couple sprung with no rats and a couple still set but completely licked clean of peanut butter. Sigh. So, we keep trying.
And, on Wednesday, I come home from work to a strangely subdued husband. It seems the rats are finally getting caught in the traps. We're not big on killing critters. We are "live and let live" kind of folks but rats that are bold enough to come IN the office while we're in there in hopes of eating a few unpopped kernals of popcorn are just not okay to have around our house. We have kids and dogs and don't like fleas and rat poop all over the place. But, we're also not big fans of poison because cats and other animals can eat the poison or the dying rats and get poisoned themselves so . . . its traps for us. But, dead rats aren't exactly a pleasant thing.
Mr Wonderful had found one trap with a dead rat and disposed of it. But, then The Boy Wonder noticed a rat in the driveway. Just lying there. But breathing. So, they were watching it and Mr Wonderful was running through the ramifications in his mind and none of them were good. Either the rat got stunned by a trap and was dying of a massive head injury or it had been poisoned by one of our neighbors or something but bottom line it's like 1pm and there's a rat lying in the driveway and that can't be a good thing. The rat pulls it together enough to drag itself into the groundcover next to the house - clearly planning to go under our house and die there so that we can enjoy it's
I get the pooper scooper that we keep in the front yard (because some of our neighbors let their dogs roam and they think my yard is a toilet! Sigh.) and scoop up the poor, dead rat and dispose of him.
And, then we check the traps again. One of them is missing. It's behind a fake fence attached to the house to give privacy to our bathroom. So, I have to take the pooper scooper into the bathroom, put it out the window and reach down into this little space and scoop up the rat and trap from there. Mr Wonderful brought a garbage bag so we didn't have to cart it through the house and show the kids.
The Princess was already upset about the idea of killing rats.
We found another dead one today. Success . . . but not a very pleasant one.
Oh, and we've found there is a limit to our reuse, recycle philosophy. Rat traps can be tossed and new ones purchased.
So, the animal stories continue. . . life in the country. It's grand!
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