I've Been Wanting to Tell This One...

Several years ago, I found a rat drowned in Katie’s water bucket. Through a series of events, Katie (an Australian shepherd) had inherited a detached two-car garage, the cars had been evicted, and a colony of rats had moved in with Katie to share in her dog food and the bird seed we kept around.

I don’t know how long the rats had claimed residency because I never went in the garage anymore. In fact, I didn’t even call it a garage; I called it a two-car doghouse.

I guess the drowned rat should have been an indicator of more rats, but it did not occur to me. I thought of it as a freak accident—a stray rat looking for a drink.

About a month later, Marcy and I were driving home and I saw a creature running down the center of our street. I wasn’t sure what it was at first because it was so large. I thought maybe it was a mutilated beaver or a deformed rabbit or something. As we drove past it, I saw it was a rat. The rat looked at me and smiled, and I’m sure if it wasn’t so busy propelling itself down the street, it would have waved. Or, knowing what I know now, maybe it would have laughed and shot me the bird. Who knows.

Later that week, before sunrise, I went out to our back-porch-turned-laundry-room. In the days of cheap energy, I used to stick my shirt and slacks in the dryer with my bath towel for five or ten minutes. That way, I didn’t have to iron my clothes, and the dryer would get the wrinkles out while I ate breakfast in my skivvies. Also, I love clothes straight out of the dryer. As I tossed my clothes in the dryer, I heard the paper bag of bird seed rustling about. Just then, Katie came out of the kitchen into the laundry room with all of her senses perked up. Out of curiosity, I peeked into the bag at the same time that a very large rat jumped straight out of it. I remember the next sequence in slow motion: the rat floating up into the air and twisting around in flight, me going rigid with shock so quickly that I ascended into the air and lighted on the dryer, Katie trying to get traction so that her body would match the speed of her legs, the rat clawing in the air in anticipation of hitting the ground running…which it did, right out the back door. Katie slammed into the dryer, the wall, and the door as she chased the rat to who-knows-where.

Huh. Freak accident number two.

A few days later, Mr. Maytag was washing the dishes, Mr. Coffee was making breakfast, and I was giving my clothes to Mr. Kenmore when I heard the birdseed bag rustling again. It occurred to me that perhaps I ought to shut that back door at night. I lunged at the bag and caught it in a choke hold right at the top. The bag came alive. At first it hopped up and down in my clutched hands, and then it started swinging around in a circular motion. Something inside started cursing at me. And then I realized that I was holding a wild and terrified animal in about 30 pounds of bird seed while I was standing in my skivvies.

Katie was willing to solve all my problems for me. She jumped up and down and barked and batted the bag and scratched up my goose-pimpled legs in frustrated anticipation. Once the summer before, a squirrel that lived in our yard (and quite intentionally taunted Katie to no end) miscalculated some minor thing—I don’t know what, wind speed or something—and ended up in Katie’s mouth. Katie had the squirrel by the abdomen, facing out. The little squirrel thrashed and thrashed and yelled and yelled and promised Katie all kinds of good things and gave her all kinds of compliments, but Katie was not swayed by her new toy to release it. However, I was there and I tried to reason with Katie about how squirrels never take baths and they really don’t make great toys and think of all the fun she’ll miss if the squirrel isn’t there to chase through the patio furniture, but Katie had waited a long time for this moment and just lay down with her little squirrel still wiggling in her mouth. So I said, “Katie, put the squirrel down.” She couldn’t really say anything, but she pleaded with her eyes just as clearly as she could with her voice. She stood up with the squirrel, and I could tell I would have to be firm with her. I put on my big, firm, deep voice and said, “Katie. Put the squirrel down. Now.” And she did, ever so gently. The squirrel ran up the cedar tree, onto the lowest branch, and all the way out to the edge so that the branch dipped down a little. She hung on as the branch swayed down towards Katie and she gave Katie a good what-for before running further up the tree.

I could tell Katie always regretted obeying that day, and she had no intentions of letting another opportunity like that go again. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I couldn’t carry this sack of rat and bird seed around with me all day. I went out to the big garbage can on the street and tipped it over, dumping all the trash out on the driveway. Then, I dumped the bag out inside the giant can. There was the rat. She jumped up a few times, but the can was too big. Watching the rat down there, I felt like I had no option but to kill it. I grabbed a garden rake and took to the task.

When I was done, I cried for a long time. So did Katie.

When I put the garden rake back, I noticed that the garage was filled with rat excrement and that many of my tools and stored items had been chewed. By the end of the week, I had put rat poison in the garage and banned Katie from going in. Killing the rat with the rake was hard, and putting the rat poison out was just as difficult. I asked the guy at Ace if the rat poison will kill the rats painlessly, and he assured me that no, it would kill them in a fairly agonizing death. I did it anyway.

I only found seven rat carcasses later that month. I was sure there would have been more. It took a long time to clean out the garage of destroyed items and poop and dog hair and dead rats. One morning, while I was working on it, a little red Honda Civic pulled up. The driver emerged, and I recognized him as a regular at yard sales. He always came to our yard sales, dickered forever, and never bought anything.

“You havin’ a garage sale?” he asked.

“No, just cleanin’,” I told him.

“I remember this place,” the man said, “I tried to buy a desk from you. You had it priced for ten dollars and I offered you two, and you wouldn’t take it. Do you still have it?”

I told him I did. He looked smug. “I knew you wouldn’t sell it for ten dollars.” Then he spotted it in the garage where it had been since that yard sale six months earlier. “Well, there it is! Would you still sell it?” He walked in uninvited and opened up a drawer. Three dead rats fell out. He opened up the other drawers and a total of eight dead rats were found in their high-rise nest.

“I’ll give you two dollars for it.”

True story.