Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Rat tale, part deux
When last we spoke, the rat had taken refuge beneath our baby blue bidet.
A word of explanation: why do we even have a bidet? It’s not really our bidet; for the love of God, no. Sure, we own it, inasmuch as we own our house (or the bank does), but — like the baby blue tile, baby blue carpeting, baby blue jacuzzi (which we use only to bathe our ferret), and gaudy gold bathroom fixtures — we would really rather not claim ownership of these things. No, they belong to the previous owner of our house, The Imelda Marcos of Brookings.
She married into the local royalty (a family wealthy from dairy ranches and lumber), breaking up a marriage in the process, and thus earning considerable animosity from the masses. All of the more heinous style choices in our house were hers, like the Brady Bunch kitchen, the magenta shag carpet in her shoe room, and the baby blue tilework around the fireplace. And have I mentioned her paranoia? The master bedroom has an escape hatch. The stairs in back have a built-in drawbridge.
No, no, no. The bidet is hers.
Back to the rat hiding under the bidet . . .
Once we had verified its identity — rat, Norwegian brown, pet shop-size, not one of the local beasts you could saddle up and ride into the sunset — someone, it might have been me, had the brilliant idea of letting the cat upstairs to catch the rat.
There once was a lady who swallowed a fly . . .
Yeah, that went over as well as can be expected. We managed to trap the cat in the toilet area with the rat, and we were disappointed to hear no squealing, no hissing, only the plaintive meow of a confused kitty. After fifteen minutes we let her out and then spent the next three hours trying to figure out how to get her out of the bedroom.
Thanks to several dozen squirts from the spray bottle, we convinced her it wasn’t safe to hide below the bed. We chased and cajoled and tried to trick her but she was always too fast. Then, after one last dash under the bed, she became compliant.
Almost . . . almost guilty.
“Do you smell that?” Karen said.
I waved the flashlight’s beam under the bed. “I don’t see anything. She must have farted.”
A word about our bed. It’s her bed — the Imelda Marcos of Brookings. She bequeathed it to us along with all of her fugly bedroom furniture. The mattress is oversized; king sheets barely fit. With the frame and box springs, it’s so heavy I have to push it in just the right way to move it. The wooden headboard is so huge, Imelda had it lifted into the bedroom by crane, and she had to do it before the workers installed the sliding glass door leading to the balcony. The only way we can get rid of this headboard is with a chainsaw.
Ash, meanwhile, had dashed into the bathroom, and seemed strangely compliant when I approached her. Her hackles were up, so I expected to get clawed to pieces, but no: she let me pick her up by the scruff and didn’t fuss when I put her out in the garage, where she and Mist spend their nights.
“So you think it’s okay?” said Karen.
“If she pooped, it would smell a lot worse. She must have farted.”
We went to bed and turned out the lights.
“Damn it,” I said.
Few things rival cat shit when it comes to odor. Gangrene and anaerobic abscesses smell worse, but not by much.
I turned on the lights, grabbed the flashlight, and checked under the bed again. Ash had left us a present (several of them) in the space beneath the headboard.
I can’t make cat poop-cleaning funny, so we’ll skip all of that.
This morning, when I went to the bathroom, I noticed that the rat had found himself a comfy place to sleep. I dealt with him. Here’s the note I left Karen.
Karen,
The rat conveniently nested in the trash, so I tied up the bag and released him in the field. As he scampered off towards our neighbors’ house, you know, the ones we don’t like, I sang Born Free for him.
He looked rather bewildered by the whole thing.
Love,
Doug
When I drove away this morning, I spotted him poking around, still in plain sight. I doubt he’ll last the morning, what with all the predators in the neighborhood, but at least I don’t have his blood on my hands.
Yes, indeed — I have far too much rat blood on my hands. I used to own snakes, you know.
D.
Oh, cat poop is nasty. Cat diarrhea is worse. Back in San Antonio, I used to keep all my cute little cookbooks in a cute basket in the breakfast nook.
I don’t have to finish the story, do I?
Glad you found & reasonably humanely took care of the rat.
And oh, before I forget–The Bidet on The Sneeze. The comments are rather entertaining.
We like to refer to our house as being decorated in the “Early Phillipino Motel” style.
Big cornices over every window covered in blue tropical flower prints, gold and plasticy bronze on most surfaces, and my personal favorite (athough I ripped it out of the house last summer) vinyl wallpaper in the bathroom done in an appealing pink alligator-skin print. Egghh.
And you were nicer to the rat than I would have been. Mice–shoo them out the door. But wild rats? Heavy artillery. I hate, hate, hate rats. (But oddly eough, if they’re the pet store variety then I think they’re cute. Hypocrite, c’est moi.)
That’s what you get for adopting US cats. You should have got a poor little orphaned kitten from Africa, he would be a lot more grateful. 😉
My sister’s got you beat on the ‘kindness to animals’ thing. When my folks discovered rats in their basement, my father was moved by her tearful pleas to employ live traps. Once trapped, she then argued that it wasn’t fair to just turn them loose into the wild to fend for themselves, so each rat was sent off with a shoe box full of toilet paper and a stash of birdseed.
Kind of like the early homesteaders …
Well, my brother worked on a chicken farm, and I’m pretty chicken shit smells worse than cat shit, so keep the chickens away from your bed.
Sxkitten – I’m still giggling over your sister story.
Did I mention she was in her early 20’s at the time?
Yesus Pete! We had an opposum get into one of our trash cans (small, baby blue — like yer bidet). We tried t’shake him out, but he stuck out all four feet and refused. We took him t’ th’schubunkin pond an’ told him we’d be back t’get th’trash can in th’mornin’. He politely obliged an’ a good time was had by all.
We did NOT sing ‘Born Free’ t’him (although that be a fine touch, m’Lad).
Thanks, y’all.
I’m hoping the best for the little guy. And, yeah, it had occurred to me to turn him into a pet. Except for the typhus and bubonic plague concern, he’d have his own kitchenette and hot tub right now.
it had occurred to me to turn him into a pet. Except for the typhus and bubonic plague concern, he’d have his own kitchenette and hot tub right now.
Pshaw…typhus and bubonic plague are curable. I’d be worried about Hanta virus!
Perhaps you got defective cats? My Luna is useless for pests, but Brit is quite the exterminator. (Her sister Nyssa was the same way.) I merely point them in the direction of the wood roaches who get in, and I might later have to pick up a leg. Unless it’s dead, of course. But at least Brit checks them first for me.
Not too long ago I found a wood roach in the tub. Luna didn’t care, but I put Brit in the tub and she was immediately interested. She swatted at it several times, it never moved. She lost interest, but I found out all I needed to know. I disposed of it and took my shower.
Finding a 35lb snapping turtle almost the size of a manhole cover in the middle of the road, thinking we had to save it! Do you know how long a snapper’s neck is? I didn’t. It was snaking it’s vicious, baby duck eating mouth around to its back end where I was holding it trying to have my pinkies for cocktail sausages and spraying foul, FOUL I SAY, smelling urine everywhere. I decided, after I’d chucked it back on the swamp side of the road, that the next time the Mack trucks can have it for target practice.
I have felt immense guilt all of my days that my first road kill was a mouse. Two weeks later on a rainy, warm spring evening (and please don’t hate me, please!) as I drove away from the lakeside house of my then boyfriend, to find the single lane road covered with hundreds upon hundreds of frogs. It was…carnage. I’ll never forget the sound. If only his parents weren’t so prudish about me sleeping over…
I had one cat who loved catching critters and it’s how I ended up as a surrogate mother for a baby squirrel. He reached maturity and lived out his adulthood raiding the bird feeders at the same lakeside house. His same was Spiffy. I miss him.
Snapping turtles: add all water turtles to that list. Mean, savage beasts.
Back in 2001-02, I wrote 100K words towards a novel I’ll probably never be able to salvage. One of my favorite scenes, though, had to do with an extraterrestrial resort which had, as one of its attractions, a zoo on the grounds. The zoo played host to all manner of galactic creatures. The most fearsome denizen of the zoo? Water turtles from Earth.
We get snappers in our creek regularly. I love ’em. They’re so… primitive.