RATS!

I have a confession to make: I like rats.

I mean, aside from their (alleged) role spreading the Bubonic Plague, their ability to gnaw through an entire home electrical system and the confetti of poopy pellets they leave behind in attics, what’s not to like? Ah, those black, beady eyes and twitching noses! The veiny, translucent ears! The best part of a rat, however, is his little pink rat hands. They’re so cute, so human-like. I would gladly share a high-five with such a hand if I could do so without risking Hemorrhagic Fever.

My rodentia romance goes way back. From the ages of 12 to 17, I lived in Roswell, Georgia, in a house on a four-acre, fenced lot. The previous owners had constructed an adorable mini barn on the property, presumably to provide shelter for the two goats we inherited with the house. In addition to Bumpy and Dumpy, that barn housed horses, a 300-pound Vietnamese pot-bellied pig and a family of mice.

Although the mice were unexpected guests with a tendency to chew through entire bags of grain, my mom refused to kill them. Instead, we bought and set up rodent cages and provided the freeloaders with complimentary taxi service to a wooded area 15 miles away.

“Be free!” my mother and sister and I shouted as we unlatched the cages. We may have even thrown in a good-bye wave or two.

We didn’t wish to murder the mice, you see. We simply desired to relocate the rodents far enough away that they couldn’t hitchhike back. Alas, I still fret about the poor mice families we inevitably broke up. Would those poor rat moms ever see their poor rat babies again?

Matt does not like rodents. He comes from practical, reasonable stock, the kind that fails to rejoice when a colony of 50,000 bees invades his Florida rental home twice in the same year. Although Bobby, Matt’s dad and our former landlord, might disagree, the holes haphazardly sawed into the ceiling and days of vacuuming up bees the beekeeper inadvertently left behind was well-worth the 10 pounds of honey harvested from our attic. Man, that stuff was fresh!

So when Matt claimed to have spotted a rodent-like creature swinging from the bird feeder outside our kitchen window, I immediately reminded him of our trip to Hawaii, when he mistook a mongoose for a mutant squirrel. Perhaps, like the bee incidents, he’d become worked up over a little innocent wildlife interaction. I did not want to risk the removal of my bird feeder, the sole source of our indoor cats’ entertainment.  Anyway, one malnourished rodent couldn’t possibly have any connection with the latest Attic Incident.

A few weeks ago, I awoke about 6 a.m. to hear something scurrying around above my head – in the attic. It was Matt. For the past few mornings, he had risen for work and undressed only to be greeted by a blast of frigid water from the showerhead.
“Damn!” he cursed as another box toppled in the attic.

I debated, momentarily, whether I should continue to lie still and feign sleep.

“What are you doing?!” I shouted instead.

“Looking for the water heater!” Matt said, peering down at me from the trap door opening in the closet ceiling. I noticed he wore only a towel. “It must be behind all this crap.” 

 He disappeared. And then —

“Oh! Gross.”

The sudden sight of the decomposing body made him abandon all thought of the water heater. He climbed down the ladder.

“There’s a dead rat up there,” he confided. “I’m going to be late. I’ll have to get rid of it when I get home.”

If there’s one type of rat I don’t like, it’s a dead one. The mental picture of rotting flesh troubled me the entire day – so much so that I recruited a neighbor for moral support upon deciding to dispose of the body while Matt was at work.

The horror of this mission must have puckered my face.

“I can do it for you,” Michelle said.

She was no-nonsense. A nurse and mother of two, she represented strength and determination. Honed by 12 years of domestic warfare, she was a hardened professional. I very nearly agreed.

“No, this is something I have to do myself,” I said. “But, if you don’t mind standing next to me while I do it…”

One by one, we scaled the ladder into the attic. Blood, guts, maggots – I pictured them all as we shuffled in the direction Matt had indicated. I wore surgical gloves and carried a 40-gallon black trash bag, the kind you can’t see through once the refuge is inside.

And there it was: A small white rat on its side, eyes and mouth wide-opened. A pile of rat poison pellets, apparently scattered by the landlords, was nearby. No blood, no guts, no maggots. The creature simply looked stuffed. But it wasn’t stuffed, I learned as I attempted to wiggle a sheet of cardboard under the body; it was so light little could be left inside.
The body didn’t possess enough heft to settle firmly on the cardboard, and I watched, eyes saucer-wide, as it repeatedly rolled off.

“Oh God! Oh God!” I said.

“Use this,” Michelle said, tearing off a wad of packing paper. Gloves or not, using a mere piece of paper for such an adjustment wasn’t nearly enough protection between my trembling skin and the rat’s lifeless coat, but I took the paper from her. Sucking in a deep breath, I brought paper and cardboard together under the remains in a scooping motion. Michelle held the trash bag as I dumped the deceased in and then completed a spastic jig of disgust.

So I guess, technically, a slight possibility existed that the “mutant squirrel” feasting outside could somehow kung fu her way past our ferocious house cats, find a way into the attic and suffer the same fate as her poor brethren. At least Matt was concerned for her safety. I experienced similar qualms when I looked out the window this morning to see the “mutant squirrel” pushing seed out of the bird feeder and into the hands of five or six adorable “mutant squirrel” babies assembled below. So sweet.

All right, Matt: If it means safeguarding those adorable pink hands from certain death in the attic, I’ll relocate the bird feeder.