Last night, he opened our back door to get the trash and put it out for collection. A moment later, he opened the nearby door to the basement, where my room is. From where I was on the bed, I could only see his shoes, which were shuffling nervously. "Hey," I said, "come on down."
"Uh," he replied, "I just let an animal in."
A few things about the Genius. He has Asberger's Syndrome, which is basically high functioning autism. As with all autistic kids, he has trouble picking up on certain social clues - part of which is difficulty in interpreting facial expressions.
A related difficulty is that he can't readily identify types of animals. Just as he can't necessarily recognize a combination of knit eye-brows, pursed lips, and clenched jaws as being indicative of frustration, he can't differentiate a combination of fur, legs, and coloring as being, say, a moose from a horse. He's managed to figure out dogs and cats, but he'd never be able to tell you what breed they were.
So when he said he let an animal in, he was being as specific as possible. It was as likely to be a raccoon as a moose. Nevertheless, I called up to him, "What is it?" "I don't know," he said. I should have known.
I hopped off the bed and ran upstairs. En route, I weighed the possibilities. This being DC, I narrowed the potential invaders down to a raccoon (less likely) or a rat (more likely).
I got to the kitchen, and the Genius agitatedly pointed toward the dining room and living room. "He's in there." Sure enough, through the dining room I could see into the living room, where a large gray rat was pacing around, it's naked rat tail erect and proud.
There are only two animals I fear. One is sharks, and with good reason. They're apex predators, and can eat you. The other is rats. I don't know why they give me the wooglies, except that they're creepy and gross. One of the most terrifying things that happened to me in Iraq was when a rat landed on my cot, stood on my chest, and breathed its rat breath on my face. Gross gross gross gross gross.
So I was more than a little weirded out to see this rat wandering my living room. I considered my options. I could just leave the back door open and hope it would leave. But that might let more rats in. I could open the front door off the living room and try and shush it out. Or I could just let it stay. The front door it was.
"Ok," I told the Genius, "you stay here in the kitchen and keep an eye on the rat." "Ok," he said, and took up position in the doorway. I considered the weaponry at hand. There was a golf club by the front door, but I didn't want to run around the living room clubbing furniture. I opted for the broom in the pantry.
Holding the broom in front of me, I hustled into the living room, and promptly hopped onto the sofa. The rat had skittered to the far side of the living room, where it paced along the wall by the front windows. I hopped to the other couch, adjacent to the front door. "Can you see it?" I called to the Genius, since from my vantage point I could no longer see the little bugger (I mean the rat, not the Genius). "Yeah, it's by the window." Good.
From the couch, I stretched broom handle out and flicked on the rest of the lights. Then I examined the empty stretch of floor between my perch and the front door. I really didn't want to hop down and have the rat scamper across my little toesies, because I'd probably shriek and possibly faint. Still, there was nothing else to do, so I jumped down in front of the door and threw the dead bolt. I jerked the door open and, brandishing my broom, made for the rat.
I couldn't see it. Had it gone under the couch? I hit the couch with the broom. Nothing. I stood back as far as I could and extended a toe to push the couch out of the way. I pushed it a foot, and the rat shot out. "Eep," I cried, then chased it.
But it didn't go out the door. It bolted for the living room. "Ah! It's in here!" called the Genius, showing more emotion than he usually ever does. So much for my plan. In the kitchen I found the Genius pressed up against the kitchen counter, half on it, half on the floor, conflicted between his fear and my charge to keep an eye on the rat.
"Where is it?" I asked. "Over there," he said, waggling a finger at the corner between the fridge and the basement door. Again wielding my plastic broom, I reached under and behind the fridge. As I swept toward the front, something flew out from the bottom. The Genius and I yelped and jumped back at the sudden motion. But it wasn't the rat, it was just the detached lower guard that had been lying loose under the front of the fridge. Recovering my composure somewhat, I continued to hit the fridge with the broom, hoping to scare the rat back into the open. No effect.
I looked at the basement door. There was about a 2-inch gap between the door and the floor. More than enough room for the rat to fit under. "Did you see where it went?" I asked the Genius.
"No."
"Did it go behind the refrigerator?"
"I dunno. Maybe. It could have gone in the basement."
Groan. I live in the basement. I can't sleep down there with a rat. And I certainly wasn't going to be able to chase it back up the stairs. The best I could do was keep it in the basement. So once again, I took my trusty broom and went downstairs, banging in front of me to announce my presence. I got to the foot of the stairs, took one step and hopped on my bed. There, I gathered necessaries for sleeping elsewhere - some blankets, my laptop, me cellphone. My survival gear in one hand, the broom in the other, I backed up he stairs, a wary eye scanning for ratty activity. I dropped one blanket at the base of the door, hoping to block the gap leading into the kitchen. Then I threw my other stuff on the living room couch-cum-temporary-bed, and called the exterminator.
He'll be here this afternoon. My savior, Julio from Terminix. The end.*
*ADDENDUM: I've named our rodent housemate Karl Rove. Since Rove was subpoenaed yesterday, it makes sense that he'd be hiding in my basement.
2 comments:
I still don't know why you're afraid of sharks.
At this point I don't even recall what chain of blogs led me here, and I have no idea whether you'll read this comment. But I just stumbled across this post and had to laugh, because I had such a similar experience five years ago or so.
My wife and kids were gone, but were slated to return the next day. I was alone in the house. It was late. For reasons I've now forgotten, I had propped the back door open for a while. I was in the laundry room, working quietly on a project, moving very little, when out of the corner of my eye I saw unmistakable movement. Since I was supposed to be alone, the realization that I wasn't triggered a huge adrenaline surge. I reflexively broke down into my best open field tackle stance: it was a pure, reptilian brain, fight-or-flight response. Then I realized that I was looking at a juvenile opossum that had wandered in through the open door.
As soon as I moved, the possum had exactly the same reaction I'd had. Since the possum was about the size of one of my fee, it chose flight and scurried deep under some shelves in our unreasonably overcrowded basement. Crap. What now?
I was tempted to just leave the door open, go away, and let the possum find its own way out. But the wife and kids were due home in the morning, and I had to go to work the next day as well. What if the animal was diseased? What sorts of parasites might it be carrying? Did I want it pooping and peeing in my house? And what if it hadn't left the house by the time my family got home? What if it instead went and hid in one of my kids' rooms? (Two of the kids had rooms in the basement, where the laundry room was.) Even if it did leave of its own accord, how would I know for sure? I decided that just leaving the door open and hoping for the best wasn't good enough. I had to do something proactive.
I considered trying to dig out the possum and capture it with thickly gloved hands, but our basement was so crammed with stuff that I knew the possum could evade me almost indefinitely if I chased it.
Long story short: I built a snare out of 30 pound test monofilament fishing line, duct tape, a couple fiberglass tent poles, and a few scraps of wood. Much like so: http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/03/29/how-to-build-a-small-game-survival-snare/ I built a small enclosure with various junk, baited the enclosure with peanut butter and apple slices, and set the snare at the entrance to the enclosure. Then I went away. 30 minutes later I heard the sounds of a struggle in the basement. The snare worked. Sadly, the possum didn't survive. I felt sorry for the little critter, but I didn't feel that I had another viable choice.
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