Month: May 2020

What would you do if there was a rat in your house? Scream? Cry? Go crazy? Feel bad about yourself? Cut your couches open with a kitchen knife? Oh, that’s just me? Let me tell you about the week that made me lose my mind. There have always been a lot of rats in our neighborhood. Gross, I know. We live in a nice neighborhood too, we just have undeveloped land around us where rats and mice live. I had two cats named Batman and Robin that enjoy killing the rats and leaving them for me. It is a disturbing sign of my cat’s affection for me. I had specific gloves in my garage that were solely for picking up dead rat carcasses in my front yard. Sometimes they would leave me three or four dead rats in my yard. Sometimes they were in my neighbor’s yard. So I would wake up early, get on my rat gloves, and walk through mine and my neighbor’s yards to pick up murdered rats. Usually their legs or arms were missing. I used to video the massacre that took place on my yard and send it to my brother in law, Cody. One time Cody’s dad, Jeb,  came over to fix my car and Batman was playing with a rat, just toying with it. Jeb told me about how they had them in their garage and he had electric mouse traps that would zap them. He kept a score written in tallies in his garage of how many he got. So I am telling you all of this to prove that I am not a dirty person who has rats in their house!! But here the story begins…

I was a single mom. When things broke at my house I would call the neighborhood handy man to fix what I couldn’t. So the strip at the bottom of the backdoor came off. It is just a rubber strip and it had peeled off. Ugh, another thing to fix. But honestly it was not a big priority. I felt no need in hurrying to fix it. I wish I would have thought about the potential of something getting in the house! So it was really late one night and I was sitting in my living room on the couch. It was quiet. The kids were asleep upstairs. I was scrolling through my phone enjoying some alone time. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw something. I thought to myself, “Did I just see a tail go under the refrigerator?” It was so fast that I was talking myself out of what I had just seen. But I was freaked out so I moved the fridge. There was nothing there except for mouse droppings. OH MY GOD. I felt myself start to itch. I couldn’t call pest control until the next morning. My skin crawled. I couldn’t sleep on the couch out of fear. I went to bed and called pest control the next morning as early as I could. It was a Tuesday. They said they could have someone come out on Thursday. UM WHAT? Am I just supposed to let the mouse live in my house with us until then? Apparently so. I pleaded to the woman about having kids. She said she would make a note of it. Kyle, the pest guy came out on Thursday and I told him what happened. He said that it was not a mouse, it was a rat. He shined his light behind my kitchen cabinets and showed me the intruder. There he was looking at us. It was dark so I could only see beady eyes. Kyle went on to tell me that he was setting up a bait box. The rat would eat the bait and desperately need water. So he would go outside the house to find it. Or he would die behind my cabinets where no one could reach him and he would make the entire house smell as his body sat there decomposing. Wow, what a great option. He went on to tell me he had had at least 12 other homes in our neighborhood call with rat problems. They had just leveled a field next to us to build a new neighborhood. I had to admit that that made me feel a lot better. After Kyle was done setting up the bait box he said, “Either way call the office and let me know what happens.” The guy was leaving me with this rat, I was on my own. A couple of days went by. Let me explain to you how high my stress and anxiety were. Every noise made me jump. I don’t even know how many times I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t take it. Am I being a total girl about this? Maybe. But it is a rat yall! In my house! While we sleep!

So a couple of days went by and I hadn’t seen any rat. Even better I couldn’t smell a decaying rat. I kept waiting to smell some horrible smell and know that the rat was behind my kitchen cabinets. 72 hours went by and nothing. I called my mom and said, “Thank God. I think it went outside to find water. I think it is gone.”

The next day I was sitting on my couch. The kids were at school. It was quiet. When all of a sudden I see the rat that I have been terrified of. He walked into the middle of the living room and sat and looked at me. I was frozen. I just stared back at him unable to move. This rat was actually really cute with big round ears. He saw me and I think he was just as shocked. He ran back to the cabinets. While I admit he was cute I was freaking out! What kind of mother am I to have this thing living with us?!?! I went to the store and bout 30 mouse glue traps. I bought three of the electric traps. I read up on it and learned to put peanut butter cups on the traps to lure them to it. I put the traps everywhere: under my bed, under the stove, under the kids beds, under all of the furniture. EVERYWHERE.

The next morning I was filled with hope that I would find him stuck to any 30 of the traps. But what I found was awful! A couple of the traps were moved and his hair was stuck to them! He had gotten stuck and then gotten himself off! AGH! This was so disgusting! I was so stressed out! But I was still hoping that he would get stuck on one of them. That night was the worst night of all of this. I was asleep in my bed in the middle of the night when I heard a thumping noise. I sprung to sit up. I can not explain enough how high my anxiety was that week. And there he was… stuck to a mouse trap… but still walking with one leg.. into my room. I seriously had no idea what to do. This was my chance. I needed to trap him. I had no idea what to trap him with. I got a big glass bowl and was going to place it on top of him and then call pest control. He saw me. He ran under my bathroom door and the mouse trap fell off. He ran through my bathroom and into my closet. My skin was crawling. I had my bowl. I started to move clothes. He ran past me. I screamed and dropped the bowl. He ran into the living room and under the couch. So this whole experience was long before I met Duane but I told him about it.. and this is the part where Duane said I am going to sound crazy…

Let me premise this by saying that these couches were on their last leg. It was a microfiber sectional that I had had for 10 years and they were broken in some areas. So he was under the couch. I was determined. I flipped the couches over.. no rat. I thought, “He has to be in the couches.” I couldn’t deal with this anymore. I went to the kitchen and got a knife. I cut open the bottom of the couches. He was nowhere! How was it possible?!? I still didn’t trust that he wasn’t in there so I pushed the couch out to the curb and made a post about free couches. They were gone in the morning. So now we had no couches. The kids thought it was awesome to have all of that space. This is when I called my sister balling my eyes out. She felt really bad for me and also laughed about how I was losing my mind. I was. I called kyle the pest guy again. I told him everything that happened. He came back and put rat glue traps down. It is the same thing as mouse glue trap except much bigger. We put candy more peanut butter cups on them. That night I once again woke up in my bed to the sound of thumping. I grabbed my laundry basket. Not sure what I was going to do with it. The sound was coming from the laundry room. It was coming from behind the dryer. I climbed on top of the dryer. I didn’t want it to run out at me again. When I was on top of the dryer I looked behind it and there he was. Stuck to a rat glue trap, holding his peanut butter cup.

Now I know that people who are animal lovers are going to say I am awful for trapping him. But when it comes between a rodent and my kids, I pick my kids. And I tried other ways before it came to this. I did feel bad though. I got tongs out of my kitchen. I was not going to touch that thing. I grabbed the trap with tongs and put it into a trash bag. The tongs went also. I said “sorry” as I tied the bag and put it into the trash outside.

My nightmare was over! You wouldn’t believe the amount of cleaning I did that night. Bleach, bleach, and more bleach. I hired the handyman to put a new seal on the backdoor and I will know now to replace it as soon as possible. My sister went with me to get new couches. I picked new black lazy boy sofas that recline. It took them a month to come in. So we had a month of all of the living room space we wanted. At first it was cool and the kids loved it. The last two weeks I was over it and wanted my couches. But now we have them and love them. I am scarred though. Even now, if there is any small noise, I spin around looking for a mouse or a rat. So many times I have moved the fridge and looked behind the cabinets just to check. Even though I had kyle make sure for me. My mom suggested that I write about the rat experience because it is funny. I decided to after my experience two days ago. I was sitting alone at the breakfast table very early in the morning. I heard a small noise. I freaked out. I looked under the table for a rat. It was a balloon floating near the ground from my daughter’s birthday. The rat was my roommate three years ago and I still have this reaction. I laughed it off. A few hours later I went outside to bring the empty trashcans off of the street. As I went to put the lid on one of them a mouse moved inside. I jumped and ran away. I called Duane. I said the trashcans will be there for you when you get home because I don’t do mice or rats. The kids asked if we could feed him cheese. Um no, no we can not. When Duane got home he wanted to let him go. I said, “Do not let him go by our house! Just so he can try to come live with us! Duane and the boys walked far away to release him.

The point of this story is that if you want to make me lose my mind, give me a rat problem. Also, replace your strip on your doors quickly, don’t cut up your couches, beware of your trashcans, and don’t let your kids feed cheese to the rodents around your house if you want them to leave. Thanks for reading.