Monday confessional - rat attack

Once upon a time my husband left for an entire month to help the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Okay so it was 2005. And it was part of his job - the City of Portland's Water Bureau sent a whole crew down there. 

I was proud of him for going, but oh so lonely! The month was November and we had a very early cold spell - days on end of freezing temperatures. At night I would sit huddled under a blanket on our couch, watching movies by myself after the kids were in bed,  and on one of those evenings a mouse darted out from right under the couch where I was curled up and ran into my kitchen - scaring the bejeebers out of me. 

I immediately set some mouse traps but oddly enough, they kept getting set off with nothing trapped in them. Hmmm. "Stupid traps" I thought, and bought a different kind. Still no luck. And at night I would continue to see the little mouse out of the corner of my eye, always headed for the kitchen where he would then disappear. Why oh why couldn't my hubby be home to take care of this problem for me?

Finally one night I was sitting at my computer - which sits inside a computer hutch, and I started smelling something. Something stinky. And it was coming from inside my hutch! I knelt down and sniffed, got down on my hands and knees and pulled out our printer and it was then that A GIANT RAT JUMPED OUT AND RAN DOWN MY LEG. 

To say I screamed bloody murder would be an understatement, people. 

The rat ran behind and through the vent in the back of our fireplace (which was not lit) and I knew then that it would once again want to go in the direction of my kitchen, since that's where I had been spotting "my little mouse". (Obviously I had rodent identification problems because when it jumped out and ATTACKED ME it definitely looked nothing like a mouse at all.)

I was determined to catch that rat and had to be quick about it... so I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a tupperware container out of the cupboard and then crouched down in my kitchen doorway and became a statue. I don't know why I thought a rat would come towards a human in plain sight, but I knelt there, frozen for over 5 minutes and low and behold, the rat stuck his nose out from under our fireplace and scuttled under our couch and then towards me. 

For anyone who knows how bad I am at throwing and catching things (it's a family joke), they know then how amazing it is that I actually slammed my tupperware down over the rat as it zipped by me and DIDN'T MISS! I know I was shocked - I screamed once again and kept on screaming... what the heck was I supposed to do now?And why had a grabbed such a small container that barely fit the devil animal?

So I did what any girl with no husband around would do. I called my dad, scooting the container across the floor with me towards the phone. And God bless him for bearing with me because I was a little bit hysteric. He suggested I at least get a lid on the tupperware, which I did, scooting the container back through the kitchen to retrieve it and sliding it underneath. Getting the long tail in proved to be a hurdle because there was no way I was going to touch it, but Mr. Rat finally got it in himself with all his running in circles trying frantically to escape. 

So there I had a rat sealed in a smallish plastic tupperware container - staring out at me. Too bad for him that he jumped out at me earlier, I might have contemplated setting him loose outside if not for that. Instead I rubber banded the container for extra precaution and set him outside to freeze to death. Or suffocate - whatever came soonest. 

Next morning he was a stiff corpse that got thrown in the garbage cart outside, still in his little plastic coffin. And I called Russell and begged him to come home before I was faced with any more animal attacks. 

Eventually he did, and no more rodents were seen in our house, until my Nanna surprised me at Christmas with a mystery box. Folded on top was this little note: 

And inside I found these... 

And then I died from laughter.

The End