The Great Rat Race

Tweet

Well, I promised to tell my fly story, but to tell it properly I need to start with the first part. The former roomie, Maggiepie and I used to have one bathroom and to make it look nice, I had some fancy soaps in a dish by the sink. One day I asked her where one of the soaps went - she didn't know. I didn't know, okay, I looked around for it, but no soap. Then, a few days later, another was gone. How odd, I thought and guessed it might've gotten knocked off or something. Then, the last one was gone - not a single idea where any of them went, but they were gone. Maggie and I were wondering where they could have gone but no ideas. Then, the big bar of soap had teeth marks in it and I spooked a rat in the bathroom. Well, now we know where the soap when. I was all for locking my cat, The Doctor, in the bathroom and taking care of the problem, but Maggie wouldn't hear of it. She made some calls and we came up with what would hopefully trap the rat so we could let it go. We put food in a narrow necked bottle, standing on end and gave it like steps up to the opening. About a week later I opened the bathroom door and there was a RAT! it wasn't in the jar. It jumped in the tub & I grabbed some of the "steps" and crammed them in front of the knothole door we had found so it couldn't go back inside the walls. I grabbed the stuff out of my way and headed for the rat. It jumped out of the tub, ran out the door and slammed head on into the wall across from it. It took a 90º turn to the right and slammed head on into the closed door. Took a 90º turn to the left and slammed into the door at the end of the hall, another 90º right took it into the bedroom. Oh GREAT! I thought. I told Maggie to make sure the bathroom door was shut and started turning the bedroom upside down to get the rat out of it. Rat ran from under a bed and slammed into the open door, looked left - saw Maggie and turned right. It slammed head on into the ac grill and did a turn to the left. It ran down to the OTHER end of the hall and slammed into the wall and turned toward the kitchen. "Oh NO!" I yelled, chasing it, just knowing it'd get into the kitchen and under the range or behind the fridge. I guess it saw the wide open spaces of the kitchen and the furniture in the livingroom, because it angled itself into the livingroom. (breath heavy sigh of relief) I parked Maggie in the door way between the livingroom and the kitchen and opened the front door. Back then we had inside/outside cats so we could do this. I then started turning over furniture in the livingroom. The rat finally ran out, headed for the kitchen, saw Maggie and turned around and ran out the front door. Meanwhile, the cats, including The Doctor, were watching, wondering what "mom" was doing now. That rat ran right past The Doctor (Maggie says it ran between his legs.) I was rather funny, the look on Doctor's face. He had this "What'cha doing mom? What'cha doing?" then "What was that?" as the rat ran past! And that was the great rat race. Turned out to be a couple more in the walls, we never did get those 2 out, but the roomie insisted on feeding them dog food (at the suggestion of the University of Texas) for the rest of their lives - and it was a number of years too. quick story about the food - she wanted to go get special "rat food" for the rats, I didn't recall seeing special rat food so I suggested she call the university and see what they suggested - it turned out to be dog food - since we had a dog anyway it was no big deal to put some down for the rats too. After a while we stopped hearing the rats fighting in the walls, and guessed that one had died - then the food stopped disappearing and we knew the other had gone - that was over a year after the first and we knew the other was dead. So, to make this a discussion - have you ever had rodents? These were actually the second time in this house we had some, and we got one again during the remodel, but I trapped that one and got it out of the house - did put a cat on it but he failed to catch it.