Monday, November 01, 2010

The Morningly After

November first is such a let down. Halloween is so full of excitement and energy and anticipation that the day after is so nothing.

Except that I had a couple of ghoulish encounters that I'm going to share. Second of all, I found a dead spider on my cat's head this morning. I say second because this happened moments ago when I could not withstand the urge any longer to blog about my First Of All. And it's a tame thing. She must have walked through a spider web with a dead one dangling on it.

I wasn't even going to mention (Third Of All?) the big black spider that I saw run out from some sweeping this morning right next to a plastic look-alike. So I won't say anything about that one. Nothing.

For the First Of All, you are going to have to commit to being grossed out. I caution you that if you are squeamish, you should STOP READING HERE.

I did some sweeping today - as I just mentioned. Under my kitchen sink is where the sightings of rat evidence has been spotted. I've set traps and haven't caught anything. They were never even triggered, which made me wonder how often they show up. Are they coming to my kitchen regularly or infrequently? I have not seen any other evidence anywhere else in my kitchen nor have I seen them alive anywhere recently either.

Today, when I removed the garbage can to collect my sweepings, I noticed the two rat traps had been set off. They were empty, however. In the corner of my cabinet, I saw a tiny little dead baby rat. It was tiny, like it hadn't been alive for more than a day or two or a week. Knowing it had to be done, I took a paper towel in my hand and grabbed the thing. I hate killing things, but as a mother, I especially dislike the idea of killing babies. Yikes! Fortunately, this one was already dead.

Upon closer inspection, the entire bottom of the baby was blood red. That was strange. Then I realized that I wasn't holding a baby in my hand, I was holding a FOOT! Sure enough there was a sliver of something in the trap, too. The rat had chewed off its own foot to escape the trap.

That was the reason I had been avoiding setting glue traps. And now it happened with the one solution that was supposed to be quick and painless. It just goes to show that these are not mice I'm dealing with but rats. Rats that can maneuver through mazes and learn to juggle. Rats that can kick some nutcracker ass (for a while at least.)

I promptly did the thing I've been avoiding and laid out some glue traps. I'll make my husband keep a vigilant eye out for live ones. But I think if I had to club one over the head, I could do it. It would be traumatic for me, but the idea of finding a bunch of glued feet would be much much worse. Or not.

On another sad note, my daughters put out the candy they didn't want for the Candy Fairies to take. (For money.) One put her candy on the front porch and the other put hers on the back deck. Unfortunately, the fairies didn't know about the candy on the back deck so there were tears this morning.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Candy fairies that is awesome - never heard of that before. It must be fun and profitable to grow up in your household. I think I would have made lemonade out of lemons by saying, "Yes, the candy fairy missed your loot but look at the neat leg this rat left you!"

Mr. Anonymous