mr. d, rat killer

We had a rat in our house a few weeks ago. Not a cute little mouse. A big. Fat. Long tailed. Rat. Normally I'm not too troubled by rodents. This, however, put me over the edge.

Z and I were trying to take a nap when I first heard it under the bed. It's just a binky, I thought. Somehow rolling around and around on the floor. I almost convinced myself it was true. Then I looked up and saw it climbing the bathroom door. Of course, the first thing I tried to do was take a picture of it with my phone so I could prove how big and monstrous it really was. But I wasn't quick enough and it ran back under the bed. At that point I couldn't get out of the room fast enough. I almost left Z behind. I mean, who wants to wake a sleeping toddler up? But, the images of the rat climbing on him were too much so I grabbed him and fled, slamming the door behind me. I was sure it was confined to the room at this point. The space under the door was too tiny for it to crawl under, right?

For the next week I slept in A's bed, not wanting to be anywhere near it. By the time I had finally summoned up the courage to sleep in my room again, Mr. D had been banished to the couch, due to a cold resulting in excessive snoring. 4 days later I found out that he and the rat were having late night rendezvous' in the living room. And that he saw it crawling under the door to the kids rooms. That's when the trap came in. No more nice, humane, super sonic noise makers to chase it away.

It took one night to catch it. It stole the cheese bait 3 times before Mr. D put the peanut butter in the trap. Thwack! Twitch, twitch, twitch, scratch, scratch. Not wanting to get up and see what happened, I actually texted Mr. D at 1 in the morning to find out if it was dead. It was, after being thrown across the room and twitching feebly for awhile. Mr. D waited until it was stiff until scraping it off the floor and entombing it in a plastic bag. In. The. Kitchen. Trashcan. Not outside, mind you. In the house! It sat there all day because I was afraid to touch the trashcan. Yuck.

So, the rat is gone. And a skunk has taken its place. Not in the house, thankfully. Maybe underneath the house. Or somewhere close by. I thought we left the rodents behind in Washington when we moved here.