Day of the Rat

Yesterday morning as I was eating my cereal, the dog wanted outside. Not really paying much attention, I opened the door to let him out. As he went out, the cat came in. The cat is basically an outside creature, but occasionally we let her in, and she takes a nap on Jesse’s bed. This time, though, she had a rat in her mouth. I squealed as she trotted by me into Jesse’s room. I hollered to Jesse, who was at the computer in my room, that the cat had just brought in a rat. Then I ran to her room just in time to see the cat drop the rat, and the rat run across the floor to her closet. I squealed again. Jesse came out saying, "Quit screaming" as if I was being silly. Normally, I would not scream, but this was not a mouse, it was a rat – a fairly good size rat.

We let the dog in; after all he is a rat terrier, and he had actually caught a rat out in the field once. Then we went into her room and got some drawing boards to barricade the rat in the closet (we still do not have doors yet). We put the cat and the dog in the closet to look for the rat. Jesse was digging around in the closet too. Of course, the rat was uncovered and ran to hide again. Jesse squealed. I gave her the "see what I mean" look and the "not so brave after all" razzing. About that time Ranger, the rat terrier, went after the rat. There was a skirmish, and the rat took off towards the barricade. There was a little screaming and crashing around. At the same time the dog hit the barricade too. We were not sure if the rat had run out of the closet or not, but Ranger had had enough rat fighting - he wasn’t going back in. We stood in the room (me with my tennis racket) not knowing what to do next. Jesse asked the big question. How were we going to get rid of the rat? I told her, "It looks like we are going to have to shoot it." To which we both started laughing.

We closed off her room for the rest of the day hoping to confine the rat to one room until Toby could come save us. The art girls came that afternoon – so we had to go back and forth into Jesse’s room to get our art supplies. I figured the rat would not try to come out while all the girls were there. At one point I was standing in Jesse’s room looking through art stuff when I accidentally kicked a tennis ball that went rolling across the floor. I nearly had a heart attack, but I did not scream.

When Toby got home from work, we decided to have the rat rodeo. We all armed ourselves and went in for the search and destroy mission. It took us a while to dig to the bottom of Jesse’s closet (that girl has lots of shoes), but we eventually found the rat. Toby killed it rather easily, and that was that. It was kind of a let down, but I was glad to be rid of the rat and the excitement.

This afternoon we are leaving for Lubbock to attend my cousin's wedding. We will be back Sunday sometime. Have a great Labor Day Weekend!