Being "Ratted" Out

In the mere month that I've resided in The Estate At 822, the few cons of living in a 1914 home have reared their ugly heads - figuratively and unfortunately for my sanity -  literally.

Allow me to explain. About three weeks ago - just before my parents came to visit - I woke up to a Tuesday morning no different than any other day. And after hopping out of my clawed-shower, I made my way to the kitchen to get the coffee started. My gaze quickly shifted from the coffee I was spooning into the filter, to the small brown dropping that glimmered atop our white sink. "That's odd," I thought to myself. "I cleaned that sink before I went to sleep last night." I pulled the coffee maker back from the wall to fill the lid with chilled water, and to my horror, there lied a healthy pile of additional droppings. "Shit."

After the confirmation from my roommate that we did, in fact, appear to have a mouse "friend" in our house, I started to panic. The counters, cabinets and all flooring had to be sanitized, but more importantly, traps had to be set. And not just traps, but rat traps. I needed to get aggressive.

Two days passed, and one Friday morning I awoke to an upside down trap, and a thin, hostile tail waving in the breeze from underneath.Our first captor. Having seen it firsthand, it wasn't fulfilling, or even sad. It was horrific. This substantiated my suspicion about the droppings that I argued against my better judgement could have been large coffee grounds. And it also brought in the voices. Where there's one... there's a dozen behind them. Larger, and unequivocally more fierce and prone to come into my room and gouge my eyes out.

Two weeks passed, and no more captives were taken. I was moving freely between kitchen cabinets, and even boasting the tale of the only lone ranger in Arizona that I happened to be lucky enough to have had grace my presence.

That was until this week... when everything changed.

As I approached the front door, I saw a small something in the distance in the dead center of the kitchen floor. As I neared, it became clearer what I was looking at. A figure with its back to me, larger and dare I say darker, seated on its hind legs in the middle of our kitchen. The third step I took ignited fear in the bastard, and down it landed on all fours. As quick as you could yell "BOB SAGET," off the morsel darted under our stove. Naturally, off I darted back out the front door.

It took Itule about 30 minutes to give up the search, even after fully pulling the stove out of place, coming face to face with the guy and subsequently screaming for his life. We followed protocol, and dutifully placed a warzone of traps (including the sticky ones) throughout the kitchen. According to the rat exterminator, "The best thing to catch the vermon, is to stop them in their tracks... even if you have to hear them scream."

I didn't care. Whatever it takes to catch them - I'm willing to try.

Let the bloodbath begin.