NOTE: This is the concluding post of a two part entry. View the first part here.
Previously on RAT IN ME KITCHEN…
So, I’m chilling downstairs, watching bad TV and out the corner of my eye, what do I see, skip-skipetting out of the kitchen into the dining area? It’s a jet-black, fist sized, stinky, sneaky rodent!
A loose rodent is all I need right now. Paranoia sets in… I just want to make this go away quietly with the wife never finding out.
I’m upstairs spending quality time with the PS3 that night and notice something dart behind the window blinds. Ricky pops out and I reflexively leap forward as we make eye contact and he scurries back behind the blinds.
Paranoia is still in the air and the wife is heavy with child, so I decide I have to tell her.
“Darling, I have to tell you something.”
“Oh my God! What???” she quizzes frantically.
“There’s a rat in the house…”
Thursday
So, after spending the better part of the night before consoling the wife and reassuring her that her knight in shining armor would triumph over this fearless foe, the day starts on a good-ish note. I discover Senor Ricky’s entry point behind the washing machine, where there’s an opening above the control tap for water flow. All I can find to plug it with is thick nylon (used to wrapped canned soda) and hope the intruder is outside the house at this point.
The cleaning dude comes through with some poison in powder form and starts distributing it in specific corners. I’m like, I’m sure we need to put some food out in the powder or something but he’s like, neh, the rat just comes in contact with it and its body starts to dry up…
Yeah, I was baffled as well.
So I’m like, “Surely, that has to be deadly to human beings as well, then!” And he’s like, “No, it doesn’t kill human being!” Gee, thanks Doc but that doesn’t mean it can’t make my life a living hell! Anyway, I accept the amateur diagnosis and hope for the best.
An uncomfortable wife returns home, self-conscious of every action but I confirm there has been no Ricky sighting but she still isn’t comfortable in the kitchen and won’t go in there unless I’m there too and I gotta eat, so you know how that ends up. No Ricky still, no powder looks compromised, so I tell myself I plugged the hole while he was outside and he couldn’t get back in. Score for Cheech! Carlton Banks dance!
Friday
A whole day rolls by and me no see no Ricardo Rodento so me happy so. The wife comes home and I tell her the same thing, so it’s a more relaxed household and all is well with the world again 😀
Or so I thought!
The wife’s in the kitchen, I’m in the living room and she suddenly rushes out to say she heard some rustling in the store. I move in, try to cause some commotion but get nothing. However, there’s no way she’s staying in that kitchen by her lonesome because she knows what she heard and we’re both hungry as sin!
So I post up on the high chair while she’s doing her thing. She’s at the sink, washing something when good ole Ricky runs out the store (Uh oh) under the stove (don’t go that way, Ricky, pleeeeeeeeeeease), behind the washing machine (you are going that way, doh!) and next stop should be my wife’s rubber slipper clad feet.
Not good.
I refused to panic though because I didn’t want to freak her out but the alternative didn’t look too good neither. The only thing is, he didn’t appear under the sink cabinets by her feet.
Odd.
Where’s he disappeared to? And then, just like that, he showed me his Michael Scofield-like escape route:
Behind the washer, he gets onto the water pipe, does a high wire act up it to the tap and squeezes, (as in, total compression) himself out of the tiniest of spaces exposed next to my tough nylon stuffing.
A ha!
Once his tail disappears out the hole, I calmly explain to my wife what just happened and with eyes wider than Jim Iyke‘s (just had to, sorry :D), she thanks me for sparing her the horror. (lesson to the kiddos… know the one you’re with ;)) So, I proceed to block off the exposed area with more nylon and this time leave some meat and fish on the powdery stuff for Mr. Rodent. Go into the store with Indomie Noodles on the mind, only to find… he’s eaten through a bunch of packs!!!
We retire for the night.
sigh!
Saturday
The wife normally wakes up early to get the day going, particularly with a swell breakfast. I never notice her leave as I’m such a deep sleeper but noticed her come in this morning with a sunken look on her face. Apparently, as she opened the kitchen door and turned on the lights, she was greeted by the two scrunched up nylon balls, prostrate on the floor and absent pieces of food on the powder.
It was official… we were being terrorized in our own home by a filthy critter!
I put in another call to management (I had done so earlier in the week) about our predicament and I wasn’t finding it funny any longer. Later that day, the plumber came round to have a look, left, came back with some wet cement he got from the construction workers on site and sealed off the hole.
Well, that stopped it (hopefully still just an ‘it’ and not a ‘them’ by this point) from coming back in. However, it also stopped it from getting back out, if it, indeed, was still in.
Bummer!
So, it was more scraps of food on the powder; a lot of kitchen avoidance and careful traipsing about the house on this particular Saturday.
Sunday
Entered the kitchen and all seemed in order… food still on powder, no rustling, nothing and we could relax, thanking the LORD that the blasted rat was outside when his thoroughfare was plastered! It was a blessed Sunday indeed and life in our little apartment was back to normal.
Monday morning
The wife barges into the room and announces, “There’s no food on the powder!!!”
NOOOOOOOOO!!!
I am not speaking on this anymore.
I Am Random!
I Am Random 