Cora and Frank battle a rodent

In deference to their privacy, we’ll let our subjects remain anonymous today. Frank and Cora, we’ll call them, an older couple we’ve known for many years. A week or so after Thanksgiving, Cora announced to Frank that she’d been hearing what sounded like the scurrying of some rodent bowling in the attic above their bedroom at night.

F: You’re always hearing something. It’s nothing but a squirrel looking for a warm place to spend the winter.

C: That’s not a squirrel. Squirrels are diurnal. Have you ever seen squirrels out after dark?

F: Have you ever seen any animal outside after dark?

C: I’m not going to argue with you. In the morning, you look up there and set some traps and call the pest exterminator guy. Oh, and Frank, if he has to come in the company van, ask him if he would park about five doors down. I don’t want anyone to think –

F: You worry more about what people might think than how we’re going to find the squirrel and get rid of him.

A search in the attic next morning turned up nothing. In the kitchen, however, there were little bits of litter here and there that weren’t there when Cora and Frank went to bed.

Cora has one of those three-tier wire baskets that hang in the kitchen a good 18 inches out from the wall and up from the counter. In it were bananas, sweet potatoes, apples, and tangerines.

On the floor below it were bits of shredded fruit and veggie skin, which Cora cleaned up, only to find more in the same spot the next day. This time she examined them with a magnifying glass and they were plainly bits of banana, sweet potato, apple, and the red plastic mesh that held the tangerines. Each fruit in those baskets had at least one quarter-sized chunk chewed through to the flesh.

A closer examination of the kitchen floors and counters yielded tiny bits that looked like long kernels of black rice. There were some in Frank’s office. Vacuuming the carpet picked them up, but many of them left dark stains in their place.

Over the next couple of days there was poop on the piano, a sticky puddle, and once, when Cora decided to practice, the sound of the scramble of some creature between the piano and the wall.

One morning a sponge Cora used to scrub pans was in the dining room and, more recently, a AAA battery that had been on the table was under a chair. And when Frank and Cora made sure the doors to the office and their bedroom were latched tight, they found that the carpet had been dug up and the doors gnawed until there was room for – a mouse? a rat? – to get under them.

The exterminator was summoned. “The Rat Killer,” Frank called him. “My Hero,” said Cora. After a lengthy explanation about the use of sticky traps and poisons, and determining that they have no pets or grandchildren closer than 700 miles, the dialogue went like this:

F: Just do whatever it takes, and that shouldn’t be much, for a mouse.

C: A rat. It’s a rat. I’m the one that actually saw him dash across the kitchen floor. He was this long (and she made a shape with her hands about the size of a hot dog roll).

RK: Oh, it’s a rat all right. The droppings are definitely rat.

C, to F (caught between gloating and freaking out): I told you it was a rat. I told you.

RK (backing away cautiously): I don’t want to get in the middle of this. Besides, you have to do something too. If one gets caught on a sticky trap, you have to determine what sex it is.

C: Eeeewww. Frank can do that. But why?

RK: Rats are territorial, and if you catch a male, he will probably be the only one you have. But if it’s a female, especially one with enlarged teats, she probably has a nest with young in it somewhere in the house.

C: “Enlarged teeth?” What do teeth have to do with it?

RK (trying to keep a straight face): Teats. Enlarged teats. I can’t think of a more polite way to put it.

C: Oh. Never mind. At least we’ve ruled out squirrels. They’re diurnal and –

RK: No, sorry, they’re out foraging at night too. People say they sound like they’re bowling acorns on your attic floor.

C: Yes! We’ve heard that too, but since squirrels are –

RK: Sorry, ma’am, that’s exactly what they are doing. I’m sure you have a rat, however, so just monitor the traps and he’ll be gone pretty soon.

F: What else do we need to do?

RK: Well, although cheese, peanut butter, and pastry crumbs are good bait, the best is chocolate. Do you have some chocolate? Preferably Hershey’s kisses?

C (suddenly huffy): Chocolate? I’m supposed to give my good Ritter halbbitter chocolate bars from Germany to some filthy rat? No way.

RK: I’m only trying to get rid of your rat.

C: He’s not my rat. Here are some stale chocolate chips you can use. This place will smell like a PARTY.

F (opening his checkbook): If only. If only.