Last Monday
morning, our house rang was filled with singing. The song on our lips was “Ding
Dong, the Rat is Dead”. That’s right – we finally caught that Rat, Donald,
bringing an end to this particular saga.
How did we
do it, though? How did we finally, after two and a half months, catch this
elusive pest? With peanutbutter and patience.
As you may
recall from the previous episode in this saga, we left off with Donald
regularly eating a mixture of poison and peanutbutter in our closet, observed with
a recently installed camera. This part of the tale continues from there.
After the
second night of filming Donald, the rat had finished off his
poison-peanutbutter concoction. Because he should have been long dead from a
lethal dose of poison by now, we decided that, rather than mixing more, we’d
put in straight-up poison pellets. That night, Donald came – and he ate his
fill of the poison, alternating with sniffing around in search of the
peanutbutter he had been eating every night for almost a month, obviously disappointed.
Then he
freaked out.
After a
frantic search of the closet, Donald hopped up on the pipes and started
shredding his way through the expanding foam that blocked what used to be his
entrance to the kitchen. For a full hour (he usually only stayed in the closet
for 10-15 minutes) he worked at finding a way through, but his efforts were in
vain.
And now we
knew his weakness.
The electrocution
trap was already in the closet, so we cleaned it up and re-baited it with
peanutbutter on a cracker. Unfortunately, when we turned it on it wasn’t
functioning properly. So, we handed it off to my father-in-law to fix and, in
the meantime, put a black plastic snap-trap (also baited with peanutbutter) in
its place.
That night,
Donald showed up. He sniffed around and came close to going for the
peanutbutter in the trap, but he looked like he’d seen such a trap in action
before. He left, having only eaten a couple pieces of poison.
The next
day, we reinstated the electrocution trap, moved the black snap trap to a place
Donald had spent a lot of time, and added a traditional rat trap – baited with
peanutbutter, of course. Surly, eventually, Donald’s ability to resist would
fade. So we waited. And the dirty rat didn’t even show up.
For three
days and nights, we saw neither whisker nor tail of the troublesome rat. We
started to think Donald was dead – that the poison had finally kicked in.
Then, on the fourth night...
something went haywire with my computer, and it didn’t manage to save the video
from overnight. But, as we looked at the live feed that only a quarter of was visible
on my messed-up monitor, we noticed first the empty poison container that was
in the wrong location. Then we noticed a tail. A very still tail.
We rushed
downstairs and looked in the closet. Sure enough, there, in the black snap
trap, was Donald. The poison was scattered, the traditional trap had been
sprung as well, and there was peanutbutter everywhere. So, now we’re left
wondering, what happened in the closet that night? Without the video, we’ll
never know.
At any
rate, here’s to Donald! May he rest in peace. He was a worthy opponent and a
downright nuisance. What more could a rat hope to have said of him?
Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.
If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.
