Chris Hansen’s blog

I thought that I had blogged about our rat, but in looking back I believe I didn’t. So, to recap:

When I got back from the hospital, it was evident that a rat had taken up residence under the sink. We saw it running around, squirming through the little hole above the skirting board. An apple in the fruit bowl was nibbled at. Scrabbling under the sink continued through the afternoon and evening. In desperation, I called the housing association and our favourite exterminator came by.

He looked under the sink, said that yes, we had a rat, and he left two very powerful traps baited with Tesco’s Finest Chunky Peanut Butter (only thing that Tesco’s peanut butter is good for, baiting rat traps) and some bags of rat poison. He said he would return in a week.

Well, after a few days we didn’t hear anything so we assumed that something had done its work. When the exterminator arrived this morning, he opened the skirting board and found that the entire bag of bait had been eaten. That, in and of itself, would be enough to do Ratty in. But, there’s more! Both of the traps had been sprung. He opened one of them (think of a giant black clamp with teeth at the end) and said, “Look at that!” I looked, and there was a leg in it. So, Ratty had lost a leg while lurching drunkenly around after eating all the bait. He opened the other, and the remains of Ratty’s head was in it. This was more gruesome and I didn’t linger to watch.

The exterminator, being made of sterner stuff, just took the traps outside and emptied their gruesome contents into the bins. A mystery remains, however: where is the rest of Ratty’s mortal shell? No body was under the sink, nor under the other cupboards. The exterminator thinks that the rat, having gotten his head in the trap, backed into the hole in the wall whence he came and then the trap nipped his head off, leaving the body in the wall.

I do hope the wall space is sufficiently cold to keep the Air du Ratte Morte (I know that’s not proper French, but I won’t welcome corrections) from spoiling Christmas dinner.

Burp…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 09:15 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.