'Twas the night before Wednesday, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring...except for whatever the hell is sneaking through the ridiculously large hole in the back of the cabinet underneath my sink and rattling around in there, thumping and bumping.
The size of the hole, and the loudness of the noise indicates that this is no cute little family of mice, no this is a larger critter indeed, perhaps a squirrel or even a small racoon, or--shudder at the thought--a very large rat. Fabulous! And you know, it's not so much the critter factor that has me disturbed. I'm a live and let live kinda gal--just ask the spiders. I don't randomly squish things just cuz they're icky, or in my way, I try to have a more enlightened viewpoint about these circumstances, but this is altogether a different thing we're talking about, this is my sleep you're messing with; my already likely to be interrupted by restless kidlet or too small bladder sleep. So, when I am zonked out quite peacefully and dreaming of Gael Garcia Bernal or whomever, and the kidlet is snoozing away peacefully IN HIS OWN BED mind you, and you start thumping and rattling the cupboard doors like the monster in a really bad Halloween joke, I'm gonna get pissed off.
Though my turning on of the light, and opening the cupboard door (which I did oh-so-slowly and cautiously in case you decided to come leaping out rolling your terrible eyes, and gnashing your terrible teeth, and roaring your terrible roar, and showing your terrible claws) didn't seem all that threatening when I did it last night at 4:30am just you wait, because I've got bigger plans for you, my pretty.
One thing you don't want is a big DEAD rat somewhere where you can't get at it--the smell is unbelievable!...I had a family of rats under my house that were SO big...oh, horrors!!!...you don't want to know!
Posted by: M. | 2004.10.27 at 09:31
Check for identifyable droppings and notify the landlord -- the joy of renting is that it's his responsibility to see that you live in a vermin free environment.
Posted by: peg | 2004.10.27 at 12:48
You wanna borrow our cats? I'm not sure that they'd really go after - much less kill and eat - anything larger than a moth, but they might scare whatever it is away. Or they'd have fun playing with it... hmmm, maybe not such a good idea.
Posted by: Kimberly | 2004.10.27 at 14:13
our one year old cat, houdini, has been bringing home injured mice to play with them indoors, cause its kind of cold outside, doncha know? and the other day he injured a bird and gave it to our puppy to play with in the back yard... its hard to forgive him for his natural instincts... but seriously, if you have creatures, borrow someone's dog for a week - it will scare it away...
Posted by: lisa | 2004.10.27 at 18:17
What? No 'possum stew? I rather doubt it is a raccoon or an opossum. Go down to the hardware store and get you a nice rat trap, and bait it with peanut butter. Harder for them to snatch away. I know all about critter loving, but rats just don't fit my view of cuddly.
Posted by: Cowtown Pattie | 2004.10.30 at 08:12