I Smell a Rat, or, My Attempts at Laughing Over an Otherwise Unsavory Situation

Recently, Jemima started pawing, whining and scratching frantically at the dishwasher. Jemima is known to do quirky things, so we really didn't think much of it. That is until one fateful morning, when we came downstairs to find the kitchen floor dotted with at least 20 bits of mouse poop.

With a great sense of urgency, we headed to the hardware store to buy them out of snap-traps. We were told that seeds would attract the mice to the traps, so we loaded them down with sunflower seeds. The next morning, the seeds were mostly gone, and the traps remained artfully un-snapped.

By the time several days of this had gone by, Jemima had been driven to the brink of near insanity. She almost never left her post as Guardian of the Dishwasher, and I became concerned that time was running out before she lost her mind forever.

My husband decided to step up his game by heading back to the hardware store and buying the big guns: rat poison. He put a big bag of it right behind the dishwasher, and we waited ... and waited ... and waited ... for any signs that the mice had moved on. When, after 2 days, we were still finding poop and Jemima was still clawing away at the dishwasher, we decided to call in reinforcements.

Practically the first thing Jesus (that's the pest control man's name) said when he showed up to inspect the place was "You didn't try to poison them, did you?" Whoops. The second thing he said was "Judging by the feces, you don't have a mouse problem, you have a rat problem. Big rats". Side note: shouldn't we all be thankful that there are so few occasions in life that call for a sentence to start with the phrase "Judging by the feces ..."?

We watched in shame as Jesus removed the half-eaten bag of rat poison from behind the dishwasher. He then instructed us to throw away our snap-traps, and when asked why, he replied "Because the rats you have are probably so big that the traps you bought aren't even going to break their bones." Then he pulled out his traps. They are cartoonishly large and make our traps look like little sissy traps. I took a picture for everyone, for comparison's sake.

As it turns out, the problem with poisoning rats is that they like to find a nice, quiet place IN YOUR WALLS OR UNDER YOUR FLOOR to die. We learned this the hardest way possible, as the very next day I was walking by the bar stools and thought to myself "something smells a little funny". Within 24 hours the smell was so overwhelmingly horrific that I am still just slightly convinced that it's not a rat, but in fact a race horse that has chosen a nook under our floorboards as it's final resting place. I found solace on the internet, as there are entire message boards dedicated to the problem of dead animals in un-reachable places. The most common tip was this, and I share it now with you: incense masks the smell more than anything else does. 

We practically sprinted to our nearest incense-selling shop, which, given that we live in the hippie-dippy neighborhood of Ocean Beach, was not far away, and bought 15 sticks. Yesterday I bought 15 more, and I'm about to make my third trip. This time I'll probably buy at least two hundred and fifty sticks. Jesus assures me that the smell will be gone by this coming weekend, but I'm having my doubts. In the meantime, we've taken to walking around the house with scented candles cupped over our noses, and we play rock, paper, scissors to determine who has to run downstairs and light the first incense stick in the mornings.