I love the little book about the mouse who seems to take every advantage after being given a cookie; one thing leads to another with him.
My morning has been kind of like that, but it didn't begin with a mouse. It began with a RAT!
A rat. In. Our. Garage! That is what we've surmised. A few days ago I noticed some droppings out there and realized there was SOME little animal taking up residence. Perhaps the droppings had been there a few days, I don't know. But then on Saturday I saw it, a dark blur dashed under my car when I entered the garage! And of course I would have totally freaked out had I not seen the droppings, but I kept my calm and carefully knelt and looked under the car.
Nothing.
I don't know what I expected, maybe some critter sitting there trembling, holding his tail and sheepishly looking up at me, like Remy from “Ratatouille.” But this rat had quickly found another hiding place, and I made a new resolve to plan out some form of extermination.
The options I figured were: Find a live trap and then truck him way out to live in the desert or mountains? Sure death in this heat, one would think. Or there was surer death, by one of those snapping mousetraps we used to use when we were kids. Do they even make those any more??
(I asked a neighbor about it and he told me they do. When his daughters roomed together in college, he brought them one when they realized they had a mouse in their apartment. One night they heard a SNAP in the other room and ran to see the dead mouse. They found instead their neighbor's hamster! How sad is THAT?!)
A third option: I actually have a resident TERRIER! She was made for this very hunt. After some useless coaxing, I literally carried Maggie out to the garage, she did NOT want to go out there with me. She knew I never invited her out at night into the dim garage, something definitely was up. But once out there I figured I'd get her all excited and she'd sniff around and locate the little creature. She used to chase cats insufferably, this was right up her alley! I acted all excited and interested, looking and looking around the garage, making it clear there was definitely something she should be hunting for.
But she failed miserably at this, offering only a few wussy sniffs and then giving me a look like, “Whatever are you talking about, Woman?” So I let her go back into the house.
Then Saturday night I opened the back door of the garage a few hours before bed, hoping the hungry rat would decide the dark outside held far better possibilities than did my dry, food-less garage.
Sunday I noticed more droppings. Are there really more? Or maybe I'm just really attuned and noticing them all the more. The jury is still out on that one, it will be a few days before I decide whether or not a trap is necessary. Stay tuned. Because trust me, you want to hear about how rat poop removal led to leaf blowing, leading to vacuuming the yard and then even a trim for my Charlie Brown tree. Oh, and rescuing a very different sort of creature.
My morning has been kind of like that, but it didn't begin with a mouse. It began with a RAT!
A rat. In. Our. Garage! That is what we've surmised. A few days ago I noticed some droppings out there and realized there was SOME little animal taking up residence. Perhaps the droppings had been there a few days, I don't know. But then on Saturday I saw it, a dark blur dashed under my car when I entered the garage! And of course I would have totally freaked out had I not seen the droppings, but I kept my calm and carefully knelt and looked under the car.
Nothing.
I don't know what I expected, maybe some critter sitting there trembling, holding his tail and sheepishly looking up at me, like Remy from “Ratatouille.” But this rat had quickly found another hiding place, and I made a new resolve to plan out some form of extermination.
The options I figured were: Find a live trap and then truck him way out to live in the desert or mountains? Sure death in this heat, one would think. Or there was surer death, by one of those snapping mousetraps we used to use when we were kids. Do they even make those any more??
(I asked a neighbor about it and he told me they do. When his daughters roomed together in college, he brought them one when they realized they had a mouse in their apartment. One night they heard a SNAP in the other room and ran to see the dead mouse. They found instead their neighbor's hamster! How sad is THAT?!)
A third option: I actually have a resident TERRIER! She was made for this very hunt. After some useless coaxing, I literally carried Maggie out to the garage, she did NOT want to go out there with me. She knew I never invited her out at night into the dim garage, something definitely was up. But once out there I figured I'd get her all excited and she'd sniff around and locate the little creature. She used to chase cats insufferably, this was right up her alley! I acted all excited and interested, looking and looking around the garage, making it clear there was definitely something she should be hunting for.
But she failed miserably at this, offering only a few wussy sniffs and then giving me a look like, “Whatever are you talking about, Woman?” So I let her go back into the house.
Then Saturday night I opened the back door of the garage a few hours before bed, hoping the hungry rat would decide the dark outside held far better possibilities than did my dry, food-less garage.
Sunday I noticed more droppings. Are there really more? Or maybe I'm just really attuned and noticing them all the more. The jury is still out on that one, it will be a few days before I decide whether or not a trap is necessary. Stay tuned. Because trust me, you want to hear about how rat poop removal led to leaf blowing, leading to vacuuming the yard and then even a trim for my Charlie Brown tree. Oh, and rescuing a very different sort of creature.
Poor maggie. She probably smelled that rat and didn't want any part of it. she's getting too old to go chasing things down now.
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