Real Men Shoot Rats in House Coats

Dear Jen,

So, I know we've been talking about my little rat-in-the-roof problem lately. For two days in a row since the original offense and Brad's subsequent tossing of poison cubes up there I hadn't heard a thing and so I assumed the issue was resolved.

Last night, however, turned out to be an eventful night.

For some reason, I had given myself one of those weird shoulder muscle nerve pinches the previous night just by merit of sleeping. Ever have those? It happens sometimes. The unique thing about this one though, is that it progressively got worse throughout the day, until by bedtime the pain was not only shooting through to my chest and numbing my arm, but also all the way up into my neck. I don't know why--my guess is that, having had my sleep disturbed by Evelyn I really needed a nap that day, and since I didn't, my physical ailment punished me by inflaming itself.

Anyway, the point of all that is to explain that I slept very uncomfortably last night--lightly. This is why, at 2:00 am, I was wakened by the lightest scritch scritch scratching above my head. Groaning, I tried to ignore it, but just couldn't! So I did the only reasonable thing a person could do: got out of bed, grabbed the nearest book, and started smacking at the ceiling. Somehow this woke Brad up.

Nothing wakes Brad up.

He mumbled, "What are you doing?" "That stinkin' rat is scratching!" I said, getting back under the sheets. Brad goes back to sleep. I try to go back to sleep. Minutes go by, no sound. I think maybe I've scared it off. But then, just as my mind is beginning to drift again:

scritch scritch scratch.

I wanted to die. I huffily got out of bed, retrieved the "upstairs" broom (yup, we're fancy like that. Or mostly lazy. And our landlords left a broom behind), knocked it at the ceiling a couple times, set it beside the bed, and laid back down. The rat and I went through this dance for a few more minutes: it would be silent for a while, I would begin to drift, it would start back up with the scritch scritch scratching, I would grab my broom and knock it on the ceiling, and it would stop again. Until suddenly Brad got up, throwing his robe on.

"Where are you going?" I asked. "To get my gun!" he replied, then proceeded to stomp around the house for half an hour scouring for his pellet gun. Eventually he returned with the gun and a stool. He loaded the gun, placed the stool under the attic entrance, then looked around for a bit till he found a long piece of wood. "This'll do for a ladder." he said, and propped it on top of the stool. Before he made his outrageous and precarious climb, he paused, considered, and said, "Would this be considered something your grampa would do?"

See, because we have this running joke that Brad is just as ridiculous as my grampa. We discovered it at grampa's funeral when Brad identified with over half of the outrageous and hilarious stories my dad told about him in his eulogy. To give you an idea, my grampa is the sort of man who lost half a finger because his snow blower got clogged up, so he flipped it over without turning it off and started picking away at stuff with his hand! They'd have gotten along swimmingly.

Anyway, so he said to me, "Would this be considered something your grampa would do?" I didn't have to pause. "Yes." So then instead of the scritch scritch scratching of the rat, I got to listen to the padding of Brad's feet above my head, and the occassional rustle, and then a couple shots.

He didn't get it or anything. But it didn't come back the rest of the night! Took me another hour and a half to get back to sleep though. All too exciting.

Old houses are fun! We do have to tell the landlord though, because our suspicions were confirmed: the rodent was tearing away at the insulation, presumably to make a nest. And even if we get rid of this one, if there's a hole for something to enter through it's just going to keep happening and the insulation is going to get wrecked. Plus we only noticed this one because it was stupid enough to go right on top of our heads.

Anyway...fun night. In other news, I'm pretty excited about this:

For some unexplained reason, over the past two weeks I've added like ten members! I'm encouraged for the good weather--I think maybe, maybe with this much interest I'll start getting a couple more people coming once we're back at the park. I'm cautious, yet hopeful! And excited! Isn't it strange how these people don't even know me or care about me, and yet since I'm the one who started the group, I still feel popular and successful! This must be how you feel every day, you fancy playgroup lady. Right?

So...hope you have a good night's sleep tonight, like I'm praying for!

Love,

Jacqui