Recently, while enjoying a bbq in the back yard with friends, we had an uninvited guest. A very large and not appropriately shy rat. Having lived in Seattle and Honolulu, which likely both rival New York City in terms of frequent rat sightings, it wasn’t nearly as traumatic as it would have been in comparatively rat free Kansas. Nor was it nearly as traumatic as the rats that took up residence in our storage room (or who tried to eat through our floors) in Hawaii. Also, on a scale of rat trauma, it fell significantly below the time that we had the rats fighting and chewing in the walls above the bed in Seattle years ago. No, this was pretty mild, and, at most, prompted me to jump up and close the door to the back porch. No biggie.
A few days later. I was taking laundry to the basement laundry room, and I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Oh yes, it was my rat friend, skirting along the rock retaining wall that borders my backyard and the neighbors above -- in broad daylight. This seemed like rather ballsy behaviour , and I went over to the wall to take a look; and also with the intent to give him a good scare and say “you’re not welcome here! and tell your friends!” What I discovered gave me a little scare instead.
When I approached the wall, the rat darted into a hole in the rocks, turned around, peered out, looked back at me, and disappeared. Into a burrow. In the wall. I stepped back and took a long look at the wall, and discovered that it was full of holes. Holes that led into what was likely a lengthy network of tunnels that in turn led to the Rats of NIMH. The Rats of NIMH that fear neither man nor daylight and had taken up residence in my backyard, a mere twenty or so feet from my house.
Upon discovery, I ran into the house and called a friend, leaving a voicemail that said simply “I have a horrible question for you that I already know the answer to... Rats live in colonies, yes?” I then sat down on the couch aware of the fact that I had likely fifty or more rats living in my backyard, and, more importantly, what am I going to do about it?
Having been a vegetarian for thirteen or so years (but no longer), I have qualms about killing things. I leave spiders alone (and sleep with one eye open), have never set a mouse trap (hoping that maybe they’ll just leave on their own), and have been known to escort cockroaches the size of my thumb outside in a covered wine glass. While I’m also unable to kill flies, I have, however, been known to poison and spray the swarms of ants that invaded our cottage in Hawaii, all the while telling them that really, you brought this on yourselves. Poisoning something soft and brown, however crawling with pestilence, on the other hand, is just beyond my capacities. I’m in an ethical quandary, you see. The rats and I likely cannot coexist for more than a finite period of time, and something must be done, but I just don’t want to be the one that does it. Neither do I want to phone the landlord and say “hey, there’s some killing to be done”, and what if one of the neighborhood cats gets into the poison? Or catches a poisoned rat and dies? I just couldn’t live with myself. No, better to do nothing and avoid the consequences.
So we wait. The rats becoming larger (they could go one on one with the cats) and more emboldened; why just today I saw one the size of a yorkshire terrier dragging a ham back into the burrow! I’m left to ask: “Is my reluctance to act based on a childhood filled with animated films of rodents railing against the totalitarian machine (The Secret of NIMH, as well as favorite Watership Down), or is it a general soft heartedness that has left me ill equipped to deal with the modern world? Don’t get me wrong, I doubt that I would have lasted a week on a farm once I learned where the delicious steak really comes from, but somehow this is different. It feels as though there’s a decision to be made, and that I’m just forestalling the inevitable and tragic conflagration to come.
In the meantime, I’m left wincing at the rustle of leaves, turning and expecting a hundred beady blood red eyes prepared to settle an age old score.
above, the burrow
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