A Rat in Residence

For the last couple of weeks, my friend Michael has been making claims about a rat living in the kitchen. I didn't exactly doubt him - the small pit has been hunting something in the kitchen for several days now - but knowing Michael's penchant for exaggeration, I did suspect it was more likely a small house mouse and certainly nothing to be alarmed about. All that came to a screeching halt last night.

At first, when I saw it lying motionless almost within reach of the dogs' water bowl (rat poison, Michael has informed me, causes excessive thirst in its victims), it took a couple of seconds to process what I was looking at. The little pit was standing over it, delicately sniffing and kind of wrinkling his nose but the word “rat” simply didn't want to surface in my brain. When it did, my second thought was that it was dead - surely no self-respecting rat would tolerate the nearness of a curious dog, I told myself - it must be dead. But before I could even call to the dog, the rat suddenly twitched, I shrieked, and the dog seized the wretched thing by its tail and flung it fiercely in the general direction of the back door. Trapped squarely between terror and disgust, I shrieked a second time and somehow managed to fight off the desperate urge to turn tail and run like hell. I dimly remember thinking, this is what a heart attack feels like. I don't know how, but I snatched at the little dog and dragged him out of the kitchen then slammed the connecting door so hard it rattled the glass panes. Breathe, I told myself, don't panic, just breathe.

It might've worked too except for the fact that I slowly began to realize I couldn't avoid the kitchen for the next four days. I was going to have to initiate a search for what I hoped would be a corpse. But I wasn't going unprepared or unarmed or alone. I would send the dogs in as scouts, I decided, then approach with extreme caution. After all, a rat who would allow itself to be flung by its tail by a dog couldn't be all that dangerous. It must have ingested some of the poison Michael had been putting down, surely enough to slow it down.

I opened the door, called the dogs to go outside and followed them into the kitchen. The little pit showed considerable interest in the areas behind the sink and the refrigerator but I saw or heard nothing. No scrabbling, no rat corpse, no blood. My initial relief didn't last. No corpse meant the thing hadn't been killed by its encounter with the dog. I wanted to believe it had been mortally wounded and crawled out of sight to die miserably but I couldn't quite convince myself. It was, after all, a rat, not a harmless little house mouse. Who knew what it was capable of or what disease it might be carrying. The idea was unnerving and I hastily called the dogs back in, moved their water bowls to the office and securely shut the door to the kitchen.

Apart from the occasional cockroach and a one time massacre of a fire ant mound, I couldn't remember ever having actually killed anything but I was prepared to make an exception for the rat. I drove directly to the feed store and bought a box of industrial poison, broke off several chunks of the vile stuff, generously baited the kitchen. I've always been a live and let live kind of person but there's something about sharing space with a rat that I can't get around for love or money.

The following morning, I enter the house - cautious but no longer terrorized - and approach the kitchen with a hopeful heart. I immediately see the rat on the other side of the door, hunkered down by the water bowl but not moving. When he sees me, he hobbles awkwardly away and vanishes behind the stove but his slow, stiff motion causes my conscience to unexpectedly twinge. Get a grip, I tell myself impatiently, It's a rat, a filthy, disease spreading, sharp toothed, nasty looking rodent and it's ridiculous to feel sorry for him. Don't be an idiot.

The third sighting is encouraging. I can see him, still by the water bowl, but now lying on his side with his little feet up in the air. I rap on the glass and watch for several minutes but he doesn't move and though I'm almost entirely sure he's dead, I decide to give him a few more hours. I come back at suppertime and to my dismay, he's revived and is now stretched out just a couple of feet on the other side of the door. He doesn't move when I rap on the glass, doesn't move when I crack open the door but when I prod him with the broom, he comes to, turns around and staggers toward the back of the stove, walking crookedly and falling over once or twice in the process. I watch him right himself, stunned and in awe of his will to live.

“I'll be damned,” I tell the anxiously watching dogs, “What's it gonna take to kill this thing?”

Here's the thing. The following morning he was still holding on although as close to comatose as a creature could be. He didn't look like a filthy, disease-spreading, sharp toothed, nasty rodent anymore but more like a sad, suffering, helpless and pitifully frail creature who deserved mercy I had no means to give. When I was totally sure he was too far gone to resist, I swallowed my fear and pity and disgust and somehow managed to sweep his nearly lifeless body into the dustpan, dump the dustpan into the trash and take the trash to the curb. I'd have set him free but with the poison in his system, it would've put any animal that found him at risk. I truly hope the shock finally killed him.

I'm left with a sense of not having handled this well and a nagging feeling of guilt about the use of poison. It was, I think - even for a rat - a cruel solution and not one I'll ever use again.