Richard Russo, "Straight Man"
Before I get back into the saga of the rat, I thought I should say something about this book because I really liked it. And hell, I like Russo. I was getting a little worried because I read three of his books, all of which dealt with a slice of life look at eccentric characters who spend most of their time in a diner. I'm pleased to say that he's grown, and Straight Man instead deals with a slice of life look at eccentric characters who spend most of their time in a university.
Way to expand your body of work, Richard.
No, kidding aside, the book is funny and it's charming. I have this urge to quote a passage verbatim where the protagonist holds an angry live goose up by the neck for a television news crew in order to make headlines and cause general absurdity, but it probably wouldn't work out of context and I have enough stuff to write about. Get the book for yourself already.
So yeah, as I stated in the last entry, I like rats. Except when they destroy a two hundred-dollar leather jacket. Well, when they destroy a two hundred-dollar jacket that belongs to me, anyway. So I had to do something. I was okay when they found my stash of Rice-a-Roni and chewed through the boxes. I shrugged it off when they ate the labels off the soup cans, making me unsure if I was opening chicken noodle or cream of mushroom soup.
I realize that I'm making it sound like my house is crawling with vermin and rodents. It's not. In fact, with the small amount of droppings and minimal amount of damage they caused, I figured that it was a single mouse. A single mouse that gets bored and decided to check my closet now and again, like some stoned teenager staring at an open refrigerator wondering what to eat. "Huh,"� thinks the rodent, "I guess I'll try another section of that jacket, since there isn't anything else to eat."�
I went to the drugstore and looked over the variety of traps. Being a fan of rats and mice, I immediately ruled out the conventional spring trap that snaps the rats spine in half. Poison was also out, as I didn't want a rat carcass rotting in the interior walls of my house though, as I mentioned in that last entry, I carried one around with me for a few years so the smell couldn't be that bad. That left two options: the live capture trap, a take on the old practice of propping a box up with a stick, or the glue trap that worked like a roach motel.
The glue trap seemed a little silly, showing a rat trapped perfectly in the middle, its cartoon feet stuck to the surface. How would that work? If it's a sticky surface, wouldn't the rat get one paw stuck and then decide moving forward was a bad idea? How would it continue to move forward if the front paw was stuck in the first place anyway? It's not like the sticky surface is time-released.
Paramount to all of the questions was the cruelty factor. I wasn't interested in killing the rat, I just didn't want him to eat any more of my clothes. I bought two of the live capture traps, putting one by the hole in the floor, the other on the shelf where the food had once been.
Five hours later, I checked the closet once again. The trap on the floor was now missing, and it was soon obvious that it had fallen into the abyss through the hole of the three-story interior wall. The trap on the shelf was untouched. I closed the closet door once again and went to work.
When I returned the next morning I checked to see if it had taken the bait. That trap was now gone as well. I looked on the floor and saw the trap lying on its side, little remnants of plastic everywhere. Poking the trap with a stick, I saw the huge hole gnawed through the corner. It was impossible to tell what had happened, but there were only two options � either the trap had closed prematurely and the rat had chewed its way through the container to reach the peanut butter bait, or the trap had worked and the rat ate its way to freedom. Either way, the rat won. I went back to the drugstore.
The poison and backbreaking traps were still out which meant, as unlikely as they were to actually work, I had to try the glue trap. I bought a package with two traps and lay one on the floor, the other on the upper shelf. I went to work again and when I returned, the trap on the shelf lay exactly as I left it. The trap on the bottom, however, had moved nearly five feet from its original placement area.
So it was like I figured. Rat steps on trap. Rat notices that paw is stuck. Rat fights like hell to get loose and when it finally succeeds, it runs back to the sanctuary of the hole in the floor, now having a legitimate grudge against the people who share the dwelling with it.
I was tired. It was time for sleep. I pushed the trap back against the side of the wall, as rats don't like to run across open spaces, preferring to stick close to the wall not unlike how gangsters sit with their back against the wall, facing the front door so they can see everybody who approaches. Shutting the closet door I went to sleep.
When I awoke I could hear some scuttling in the closet. I wanted to go back to sleep, but I remembered how it had obviously broken free earlier. I got up and opened the door. Inside was a tiny, cute little mouse, just about the same size of my mouse that I wrote about in the last entry; the one that knew when to hide from security and shared many a beer with myself.
This is what I hadn't thought about. What the hell was I supposed to do with it now? With the catch and release trap, at least I could've brought it to a bar or nightclub I didn't like and let it run free. I already know from experience that rats have great homing instincts and if I were to release it, the location would have to be miles away. But now I had a cute tiny mouse with four paws stuck firmly to the trap, showing that there is one product that has truth in advertising and I had no idea what to do with it. Obviously, I can't pick the rat up with my hands and pull him off the glue. And I wasn't going to kill it.
The Darwinian in me solved the problem. I grabbed a dustpan and scooped the trap, rat and all, into a bag, which I tied loosely to allow air to flow through. The trash was getting picked up that same day. If it could figure out a way to escape, he'd be happy for the rest of his life living amongst a garbage dump. If he couldn't, it would have time to reflect, where it would ultimately decide it was a bad idea to continue moving forward after getting that first paw stuck. It wasn't the best solution, but it was the one that had the least amount of blood on my hands.
Truth be told though, I wasn't happy with myself. Thinking of the poor animal starving to death, all four paws stuck to a surface seemed unnecessarily cruel. But I couldn't think of anything else. What could I do? Put some poison on the surface? Tighten the bag to make it suffocate? Stick the rat, trap and all into a cage and teach him the gospel until he repents?
And fuck, it just had to be tiny and cute, especially after reminiscing over my own pet mouse, which this one reminded me so much of. I went back into my room, ready to go back to sleep, not particularly proud or relieved. I snapped off the light then suddenly turned it on again. For some reason, I decided to take the remaining trap off the shelf and placed it where the old trap used to lay.
I woke again, a few hours later. Again I heard scuttling in the closet. Again, I opened the door.
The second trap found a victim. But this time it had found a full-grown rat. The big, scruffy kind they use to make horror movies out of. And this one wasn't as resigned as the first little cute mouse, using its one remaining paw to prop itself up as it gnawed away at the trap in an attempt to free itself.
I just realized something. I'm making it so nobody is ever going to want to visit me, huh? I keep the closet door closed, people!
Anyhoo. I've also had rats of this size. Sure, you don't get as many people cooing, but when they saw how friendly my pets were they usually got over their initial revulsion and wanted to hold it for themselves. Not this guy though. This is one that you wanted hit with a shovel. Or dismember with a chainsaw.
I grabbed the dustpan again, and the rat made a serious college try to lunge at the plastic. I was just waiting for it to find that superhuman strength (or in this case, superrat strength) that you hear about when somebody parks their Volkswagen on their toddler. I was sure it was going to break free of the glue and attempt to eat my face. But I got it and the trap into a plastic bag and again tied a loose knot, placing it into the garbage bin where it could plot with the other rat on how to escape, utilizing that rat telepathy they all share.
I bought more traps and put them in the same place. I didn't have to work that night, but I went out to find another place to write about for the paper. When I got home I again checked the closet. Both traps were exactly where I originally placed them.
I thought for a second that perhaps that was the end of my problem. Perhaps the father rat was the big, crazy mean looking one that had stumbled upon the first trap and escaped and told his son about it, warning him to stay away from that place. Then the younger rat, like all teenagers, decided to check it out anyway despite the warnings. After getting captured, the father became worried and returned to the cursed place and became stuck himself. Or maybe it was deeper than that. Maybe, just maybe, he witnessed me scooping his son away and voluntarily got himself stuck so he could be reunited with his sibling and they could escape together.
Yes, I think of things like this. Far too often, to be honest.
Two days passed. The traps stayed in place. Nothing was moved. Two additional days later, I again returned home from work and checked the closet to see if there was any change. After all, as exciting as a movie would be with a rat saving his own misguided son (you listening, Pixar? Because if you are, I own the intellectual rights to this story line, even if it's far from intellectual.)
As timeless and classic as that story line is, however, I know that rats aren't loyal to each other and that they bread. A lot. And often. That's why I kept checking the closet, even though I didn't expect anything to be different. I looked for the trap on the shelf, which was still there, unmoved. I looked for the trap on the floor.
It wasn't there.
I scanned the rest of the floor area. A large, empty cardboard box that I had propped against the sidewall was now askew, leaving a clear path to the exit. Using my skills from reading all those Encyclopedia Brown books, I figured the rat must have gotten itself partially stuck, and yet somehow managed to use its weight and mass to fight its way back to the hole of freedom, glue trap still attached somewhere on its body.
Something about that scenario made me happy. Good for him. But I couldn't help but wonder what would happen now. He (or she � let's face it, you never hear about a man finding the strength to lift a Volkswagen off their baby) beat the odds and managed to escape the horror of the glue trap, but only by bringing same said trap with him.
I couldn't help but wonder � where was it stuck? Was it fastened to one paw, making him wander the nether regions of our house with one limb stuck to a 4 X 12 inch trap, like some sitcom hack with one foot in a bucket? Or more likely, considering the maneuvering it had to do to escape down the hole, was the trap stuck somewhere on his body, and now for the rest of its days it had to wonder if the other rats were constantly staring at the trap like it was some sort of deformity? Would he consider it a badge of honor from exploring, or would he be ashamed?
Yeah, I really do think about things like this. I also wonder if Chairman Meow, my last cat, hated hearing the same Victim's Family album over and over. When you flick a bug off a table, does it scream on the way down? Does it think about its family? The great American novel it will never finish? And once it hits bottom and realized that it's not dead, does it resolve to be a better person? Was it excited by the rush and wants to do it again? And what about slugs and snails and turtles and such? When they cross a long distance, considering their size, are they excited? Do they think they're making good time? Are they on a schedule? Is there a girl waiting at the other end, or are they just wandering the great American landscape like Kerouac but in a much slower manner?
In any case, I put the remaining trap on the floor to replace the one that was now missing. There it sat, unmoved and untouched for the next three days. Tonight I got home and after settling in, ready to go to sleep, I again heard scuttling noises from the closet. I opened the closet door to find a rat stuck to the trap. Only this time it had a trap stuck to the upper portion of his body as well, making the appearance of a rat sandwich, which means I'm never eating sandwiches again.
This, of course, means I have to renounce all the statements about rats being incredibly smart.
