Chekhov’s Mistess

Letter from Brooklyn

Last night I caught a rat.

You can tell the difference between a mouse and rat by their size. The rat, even a youngn’ like we had, is, of course, much larger than a mouse, probably five times the size (we also have mice, but they’re nothing in comparison). You can also tell a rat from a mouse by its tail – much longer – and its droppings – also much longer. But my favorite way to tell a rat from a mouse is this: Rats screech!

Rats screech when they get they’re legs caught on a sticky trap and they are flailing about your kitchen. They screech when you throw a plastic box on top of them and they’ve got nowhere to go. They screech when they get out of the trap and you come close to them.

Did you know that rats stand on their hind legs and roar like bears? Well, they don’t roar, they screech, like I said, but they stand on their hind legs and look as menacing as they can in their oh so menacing little bodies that you might say were cute if it weren’t for the 2000 pounds of pressure their cute little jaws can exert.

So I caught the rat in the plastic box. We didn’t know what to do with it. I spent most of the night in vigil over the box with the rat, Willard style, contemplating how I was going to murder the critter before the Sun King awoke in the morning to storm through the house as he usually does.

We called the local precinct – to protect and to serve – they laughed. The desk Sergeant said to my wife in a burly voice, “So what does your husband think?” They sent a squad car over, slow night I suppose, and gave me a nice smirk before I sent them away. I was busy. Diabolique.

Well the end of the story is that the exterminator came over this morning and told me all the fun facts about rats  – they charge $10 more to deal with rats; hope you understand, he says. He sprayed poison on the little guy and set him free to scurry away and die. He, the exterminator, seemed a little scared. We’ve already put mesh up over all the conceivable entry points, I’ve used bleach to clean up the rat poop, and now I can add “rat catching” to my list of life experiences. [continued]

comments

Sometimes I miss living in a city.

Today is not one of those days.

    – Ella (03/28  at  12:41 PM)

I pray you released him far away from your dwelling place.

we did the same thing, except right next to our house, and it curled up and died in it’s hole that it had carved out of the bottom of the house.

not a pretty thing when you have dead rat.

the other time we put out rat poison to get them to eat it. except this time their nest was in the engine compartment of the freezer, and it went back to the nest to die.

gross.

    – Daniel Nicolas (03/28  at  01:27 PM)

Mourning doves are country pigeons, and squirrels are country rats.  Only difference is that in the country, we take ‘em out without the law gettin’ involved…

    – susan (03/28  at  01:39 PM)

at least you had an exterminator do it. i once caught a mouse in a trap, partly paralyzed, and i had to put it out of its misery. worst experience ever.

    – bookfraud (03/28  at  03:18 PM)

Another difference - rats smell.

Yeah, I belong in the city, I guess, because my instinct is to call someone.

Basically, I’m a coward when it comes to that stuff, although I sure did like thinking about murder in such a real sense for a while. Not having to hide the body makes it easier.

And folks around here love to tell stories about how bad it is, with our rats and all, but we still love it.

    – Bud Parr (03/28  at  04:02 PM)

Did you name the rat Cagney?

Yes, rats are horrible urban realities.  Then again, for all suburban dwellers, what is a field mouse but a metropolitan rat in training?

    – ed (03/28  at  04:50 PM)

I had a nephew who worked for an exterminator in the summer. Most interesting “Rat Fact” they can’t throw up! So once they eat poison that’s it

dun ta dun dun!

The humane society wants to put a ban on testing some poisons until they know what the effects are

I suggested we try them on Agents first, that way there will be no public outcry!

    – Steve Clackson (03/29  at  03:04 PM)

I recently moved to downtown Los Angeles.  In a matter of hours after moving...during a lovely evening with wine and the first meal cooked in our new home...I saw, out of the corner of my eye. a “rouse” making his way across our kitchen floor. Swiftly. I call it a rouse because it was more field mouse in size, texture, odor and unscreechability. It does seem, however, that the likelihood of a brown field mouse coming to stay with us in our concrete jungle is a bit far-fecthed, no? So, was it then, a rat? Or some fascinating urban cross between the two as yet to be identified by urban dwellers in a city that celebrates more plastic surgeries and permutations than, well, anywhere else?  Wishful thinking perhaps.  I suppose I should learn to call a rat a rat.

    – callie (03/29  at  04:46 PM)

Two winters ago, I heard a cranky symphony played on the back of my refrigerator. After a few nights of listening to this ‘music’, of my Boxer losing her balance suddenly on the vinyl flooring, the cantankerous maestro skittered out one evening while I was doing the dishes. She was a field mouse.

I didn’t want to kill her, to use a deathtrap, and I didn’t want to encourage her to nest within the fridge or inside my house. The alternative was a “have a heart” trap, and to bate her with a smudge of the best, most natural peanut butter. She fell for it, and I took her along with me and my dog for a run on the wilds of the Commons. Setting her free, I discovered the mouse to be more or less in a drunk state of shock and she was lathered pretty good in peanut butter.

I let her go, and I ran my dog, to realize that a hawk probably found the basted critter to be a pretty good meal.

-g+bb

    – Ginab (03/30  at  12:50 AM)

The other thing:  There is a difference between common rats and Norway rats.  Most urban metropolises have the Norway rats to deal with.  So all this talk of field mice needs to stop.  In other words, a real man, so to speak, battles a Norway rat. 

    – ed (03/31  at  12:06 AM)

You should try having an opossum walk through your bedroom in the middle of the night.  And that’s in downtown Annapolis.

    – lhstrachan (03/31  at  08:02 AM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: March 28, 2006
• Filed Under:
  Song of Myself: Diary

• Comments:11
• Links to this Post: Technorati

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