Peanutbutter and Patience

            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?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

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.

Unwelcome Guest

            Colleen has started calling me Wile E. Coyote whenever talking about our rat problem. I must admit that the idea of painting a fake tunnel to trick the rat is becoming quite appealing.

            In the ongoing saga of our attempts to get rid of Donald, the rat living in our house, we last left off with Donald regularly eating poison hidden in peanut butter on crackers in our closet. When that failed to get rid of him, we switched poisons. A week later, going on the hunch that we might not be getting a high enough dose of poison into the rat, we crushed the poison pellets, mixed them with the peanut butter, and put that in the closet on a plastic lid.

            Donald has been steadily eating it for a week, but he should have been dead by now if he was getting a lethal dose. So, in an attempt to gain a better understanding of our enemy (and in connection to a vague scheme involving dropping a bucket over Donald while he’s eating from his dedicated food source), I set up a camera in the closet.

            We now have video footage of our unwelcome guest – he showed up around 11:00 last night, after everyone had gone to bed. Here’s what he looks like:

            It’s hard to tell in the picture, but he’s about 10 inches long, not including his tail, and 4-5 inches tall. Until now, we had been assuming (well, hoping) that Donald was a somewhat smaller rat, when it turns out he’s actually as big as Templeton (who I actually saw in person). In fact, there’s a good chance he’s the same rat a Templeton, which heightens our suspicions that he is immune to poison. Either that, or he’s somehow smart enough to know how much to eat to avoid a lethal dosage.

            What’s next? Well, we’ll likely try a new type of poison. Failing that, I just might have to go through with my ridiculous bucket plan. Or, better yet, I could hang an anvil in the top of the closet and, when he shows up, drop it on his head! Yeah, that should work....

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

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.

Rat Warfare

            Back in November, I mentioned that we had a rat in the house – I never got around to sharing that we managed to get rid of it. At least, we’re pretty sure we did, because the poison my father-in-law put out vanished and we stopped seeing any signs of Templeton.

            Well, then on January 20^th Colleen baked a batch of cookies – and low and behold, that night we had a visitor chew its way through the container to get at the cookies. Reasonably confident that it wasn’t Templeton returned to haunt us, we named this one Donald (it seemed appropriate, due to the date of its arrival and the incessant trouble it’s caused).

            Now, in case you weren’t aware, catching rats is nothing like catching mice. You don’t just put down baited traps and they wander in – rats are clever enough to know traps when they see them. At least, this one is. (Also, a disclaimer here – I am opposed to killing the rat; I can’t even kill bugs. However, I also can’t live with a rat and remain sane, and peaceful methods of removing the rat have failed, so I have approved and even masterminded lethal methods for eliminating this problem.)

            We immediately put out the electrocution trap that failed to catch Templeton – baited with a cookie and the entrance concealed with the destroyed cookie container. Poison was also put out in the basement, as it had worked last time.

            We waited about two weeks. Donald wasn’t falling for the trap or the poison, but we were still seeing signs of visits. After a mousetrap was stolen (there were two that had been sprung for a while – it avoided the one that looks like it’s set and dragged the other one behind the stove and ate its peanut butter bait), I devised my first master plan.

            I had noted that every time Colleen baked, a rat seemed to show up. The smell was an irresistible lure. So, we removed the camouflage from the electrocution trap, removed the bait and cleaned our scent from it. We then placed it against a wall (an ideal place for catching rats), baked a fresh batch of cookies and baited the trap with one (sealing the others in the fridge so there were no others available).

            It didn’t work the first night, but the second night Donald couldn’t resist going for the cookie. Unfortunately, something went wrong – the trap didn’t trigger properly (we think the cookie got in the way), but a tuft of fur caught on the entrance (along with the untouched cookie) told us the rat had gotten a nasty shock. I was elated that I’d outsmarted this little monster, but I knew it wouldn’t fall for that trap again. So we decided to seal it out of the house.

            Since the rat was coming into the house through our front closet (and, from there, through a hole into the kitchen), we cleared out the closet (depositing the coats on the couch) and set to work. Using expanding foam laced with window screen, pepper, cayenne pepper, and peppermint essential oils (the internet informs us that rats can’t stand strong tastes and smells), we filled up the holes. Then we placed a few strategic crackers to determine if the rat was still able to get in.

            The next morning, we found that Donald had chewed several of our coats on the couch – on the opposite side of the room from the closet. It’s still unclear if it was searching for food or just getting revenge on us for blocking the hole. Luckily, the damage wasn’t extensive. However, it did mean there was another way in – one we’ve been unable to locate.

            A more traditional snap-trap was set on that side of the house, but, once again, it seemed like the rat was aware of what it was. Our hope began to wane.

            Then, a few days later, the cracker in the closet vanished – telling us that the rat could still get in there, even though it didn’t have a straight line to the kitchen from there. That’s when I came up with my next master plan.

            I knew rats to be cautious – they need to trust something and its location before they eat it. Donald had trusted the cracker in the closet, so we replaced it with another one – this one topped with peanut butter laced with poison. We placed two other crackers at other locations the rat was likely to go.

            Two days later, the cracker in the closet was gone. We rejoiced, because we’d finally tricked Donald into taking the poison! However, we knew the war wasn’t necessarily won yet. The cracker only had 6 pellets of poison, and it takes 6-30 to kill a rat. So, we moved one of the other crackers to the closet. This one took three days to vanish, but each of the next two only lasted a day each.

            The current cracker has been there for two days, and we’re holding our breaths. Has it worked? Are we finally rid of Donald the rat?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching 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.

Templeton

            So, remember how, around last Christmas, I told you about Squeakers the black ops mouse? Well, a little over a week ago, Colleen and I noticed some rodent activity in the kitchen. Naturally, we set out traps, but they were unsuccessful. One was set off the first night they were out, but didn’t catch anything.

            This was when we started to notice how clever this particular rodent was. For starters, it avoided going after the same source of food twice. It avoided the traps. It removed the steel wool we used to plug its entrance, so we had to hot-glue it in to keep it in place. At which point in time it found a new way in. Rather than gnawing through the plastic wrap covering a dish, it lifted up the edge. I was actually tempted to write a note to our uninvited guest to see if it could read.

            Then, on Thursday night, I heard a gnawing from downstairs. Colleen and I went to investigate. That’s when we caught sight of him – not a mouse, as we assumed, but a rat (almost as big as a squirrel)! He skittered across the counter (from where it’d been eating an onion) and down behind the stove.

            Colleen headed over to her parents’ half of the house to see what could be done about this new plot twist, while I stayed to watch over the kitchen. After a while, I heard a skittering behind the stove. Sure enough the rat, henceforth known as Templeton, was coming back. He hauled himself up onto the back of the stove, looked up, saw me, and almost did a back flip in his hurry to scurry off.

            Well, we got a live trap set up. The next day I was sent out to get a trap that’ll electrocute Templeton if he can be lured in. However, we’ve had no luck so far. We still notice occasional signs that Templeton is still around, though he doesn’t seem to have been eating anything. I suspect he’s lying low, aware that we’re trying to get rid of him.

            While I can’t stand having such a pest living in the house, I wish we didn’t have to try to kill him off (I can’t even bring myself to kill bugs). I mean, if we could establish communication with him, I wouldn’t mind cohabitating – as long as he’s willing to wash his paws. Alas, the language barrier is fairly large and we must tolerate Templeton terrorising us until he is caught.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching 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.