I've been laughing myself silly at Boudicca's rodent adventures (Parts I, II, III, IV, V and Conclusion). She had a mouse move into her mini-van and she tells the story in fine style. Somebody was listening to my laughter. Karma, as they say, must balance.
Saturday eve I was standing in the carport waiting for man's best friend to finish her business and return to the domicile. It was cold. Damned cold.* I was shivering so hard my balls thought they were epileptics. My mind wandered a bit and I thought about what I'd do if I got locked outside of the house. I decided I'd be forced to skin Kota for her fur as I'd need something to wrap around myself for warmth once her body cooled and the blanket of entrails (a la Luke Skywalker in Empire) no longer sufficed.
I was brought out of my reverie by a skrinching sound. A sound remarkably similar to the noises that the homestead's resident rodent** makes when traveling about his cage. A sound of tiny claws on a hard surface. This sound was similar but had a different timbre. It included a bit of that nails down the chalkboard cringe inducing noise.
Tiny claws on metal.
There is but one thing in the carport that is metal.
Now I've been reading Bou's RatMobile posts for several days so the math added up really quickly. Skrinching sounds of tiny claws on metal plus metal mini-van equals rodent in the mini-van.
My nads stopped shaking and retreated northward (to somewhere around the pit of my stomach, I believe). Don't get me wrong here, I have no particular fear of rodentia - no great love for them either, mind you. However, I have a Lovely Wife who reacts poorly to them*** and if this thing was actually inside the van I had A Serious Problem(tm).
The cold weather forgotten, I pounded on the van. The skrinching stopped. I stood on the bumper and jumped up and down, shaking the van. That did the trick. A gray form with a naked tail streaked out from under the van, raced across the floor of the carport and exited stage right.
Kota came back at that point, possibly attracted by my somewhat unusual behavior****, and I adjourned to the warmth of the house.
So the bad news is that we've got a rat. The good news is that it isn't inside the van. The other bad news is we need to be rat free. The other other bad news is I need to do that in a non-death causing manner. The other good news is that my balls eventually descended to their normal position of dangling glory.
* Yes, even Buffalo natives get cold sometimes. In this case the temperature was in the teens and there was an actual wind and I was standing still. Plus I was in my skivvies. If you've never seen me in my winter jacket and boxers let me just tell you that the sight borders on the spectacular.
** A gerbil of monstrous size. He is to gerbils what John Kerry's chin is to a human chin.
*** Poorly doesn't mean jumping and screaming. It does however include elements of the "wake Jim up as soon as rodent evidence becomes apparent" and the "no killing the beastie" varieties.
**** I generally only jump on the van during Drunken Movie Review Nights.
I can safely say that this post contains more than I ever wanted to know about your reproductive system.
And why, pray tell, would removing a rat in a terminal method be a bad thing? Maybe its something you could do without screaming like a little girl and thus not making the familial unit aware of the unexpected guest in the carport...
Are you kidding? I scream like a little girl at every opportunity. It's one of my most endearing qualities.
Oh, Jim. you do NOT want that thing to nest in your car, where it is very warm as opposed to very cold outside. There is more to my story... my husband was sure this was in some way my fault as I had those damn corn chex in my car. 4 months later, he opened the hood to his prestine clean, hardly ever used, sports car and found a frickin' nest. A rat nest. I nearly laughed my ass off.
If you can't kill it, you gotta get a havaheart trap, but then you're stuck with that damn thing ALIVE in a trap. Blech.
If I had it to do again... I'd call my exterminator and have him kill it and dispose of the body. Always an option.
GOOD!