In Memoriam - Ode to a rat

I'm not really going to write an ode today - I'm not in the mood for poetry writing, rhyming and iambic pentameter at the moment. So here's the story:

When I first got my house, I started putting stuff in the garage - bad idea.  Apparently I had a rat in the garage and it ate a bunch of my stuff.  Expensive stuff.  Washer hoses, car upholstery. Yep, in the space of a week that rat cost me several hundred dollars.  But I hate killing things, so I enlisted the help of my brother-in-law to set rat traps, and my dad to check them.  Although in the end I was the one who discovered the rat body in a pool of blood behind a stack of doors.  No fun.  Poor rat.

So, now three years later - a few weeks ago I go to the corner of the garage to get some yard tools and something furry scurries behind the shelves.  Did I scream?  No.  Run for higher ground?  No.  Freak out, or have an adrenaline rush?  Not in the slightest.  Rodents don't scare me. Granted I wouldn't care to meet an ROUS from the movie, Princess Bride, and I'd pass on the face-eating kind of rat from George Orwell's book, 1984.  But generally, if it has fur, I'm usually pretty much okay with it. 

My reaction to the furry friend:  I just stood there for a minute or two and thought, "huh, I think that was a rat, hopefully it's just visiting and won't move in and eat my stuff."  Days later, opened the garage door and the rat scurried up the shelves and ran across the rafter and into a hole into the attic.  Dang it, it moved in.  And it was super cute!  I would never want a rat as a pet, I think their tails are gross - but it was light brown with rounded ears, more like a big mouse.  Sigh, I don't like killing things, especially cute things.  But rats carry disease, they leave droppings, and the city considers them vermin that must be exterminated.  So when I found a large bag of catfood that had suddenly been ripped open to become a rat schmorgasborg, I finally sucked it up and climbed up to the attic to set some traps.

Saturday night I was sitting in the living room right under the traps ... and I hear, snap!  And struggling around.  Poor thing.  I prayed that it would die quickly.  It did.  I put off the dealing with the body disposal until today.  I didn't want to have to grab a trap with a floppy dead rat and possibly clean up another pool of blood.  But I forgot about something - rigor mortis.  Brilliant.  No floppy rat.  So I climbed up to the attic (wearing gloves), picked up a trap with a stiff rat wrapped around it, no blood, shoved it in a bag and dropped it in the trash.  Voila, 30 seconds and done.  I didn't enlist any boy help this time and dealt with it myself.  Bravo me.  Here's hoping I don't have to deal with another rat for at least three more years. 

Note to self:  Umm, yeah, maybe you should try preventative measures and get around to fixing the gap in the bottom of the garage door, just saying.

So, the count:

The rats
Several clothes washer hoses eaten through
Backseat of Aztek upholstery and foam thoroughly gnawed
One large bag of catfood tasted and tainted

Me
Two dead rats