The Rat in the Bedroom

Last night, after I'd had my dinner and was decompressing from another day in the crucible known as the modern workplace, I noticed that Olivia was staring behind the TV. Not just looking--staring. Like someone or something was looking back at her. I paid her little attention--cats do strange things sometimes, and there doesn't have to be a rhyme or a reason for it.

A few minutes later, though, Ms. Christopher stopped in exactly the same spot and stared in exactly the same direction. Something really was back there--maybe a moth or a beetle or one of those big, hovering houseflies that looks and sounds kind of like a Blackhawk helicopter.

I got up, shooed Christopher away and looked behind the TV. There, clinging to the cable running from the TV, was a silhouette slightly large than a walnut.

The silhouette had a tail.

Oh shit. It was a mouse, or perhaps a baby 'possum (they've been known to roam the neighborhood). Whatever it was, I wanted it out. I chased Olivia and Christopher away from the area, got out the big bad flashlight with the anodized aluminum casing--makes a great bludgeon when needed.

Unfortunately, when I shined the light behind the TV, the silhouette was gone. I couldn't see it anywhere, and I heard no sounds of movement.

Oh. Shit. Now I had to hunt for the damn thing.

I opened the front door (hoping to chase it out into the hall, at least) and searched under both the TV stand and the cabinet next to it. Nothing. I listened for any scurrying or skittering. Nope.

Then, I saw Olivia staring with intent into my bedroom, her tail twitching furiously. I shined the light to where she was looking--a smallish gray/brown head with shiny black eyes glanced at me before retreating into the darkness under my bed.

That wasn't a mouse. That was a rat--a baby rat, most likely, but most certainly and discernably not a mouse. A. Rat.

OH. SHIT.

Olivia dashed into the darkness after her new furry friend. I called her name several times, but she didn't come out, and there were no sounds of struggle from beneath the bed. I got down on the floor with the flashlight--Olivia was sitting contentedly, but there was no sign of a rodent, live or dead, anywhere near her.

I started to systematically disassemble my bedroom, beginning with the bed itself. I flipped the heavy, Tempurpedic-knockoff mattress and boxspring on their sides, but only found olivia and many tufts of Christopher's fur--not exactly what you want to see when you're hunting a small, fuzzy intruder.

I began carting things out of the room. My bedroom tends to be a disorganized mess, with stacks and piles of comic books, trade paperbacks and various other...stuff...here, there and everywhere. I piled books up on the cabinet in the living room, brought in trash bags to toss whatever wasn't essential to my existence and used the broom to sweep up the fur under the bed (it would also make a handy weapon, if necessary).

I'd gotten a large space of the floor cleared, with Olivia off to the side watching casually, when she began to circle a particular pile of odds and ends.

That's when the squeeking started.

Until then, I'd hoped, rather irrationally, that the rat had fled, had gone back out the way it came or chosen some other path of egress. However, once it started, I knew that I could not sleep until I knew, with absolute certainty, that this interloper was either gone or dead, and that I'd have to pick this pile--and, if need be, this whole apartment--apart until it was found and dealt with.

OhshitohshitOHSHIIIIIIIT!

I surgically separated items from the pile, either moving them out to the living room or dumping them in the trash bag. Once I filled the bag, I carried it out to the alley and started on another. When I filled that second bag, I carried it out to the alley. This time, there was a large, trundling mass ahead of me in the gangway--it was an actual 'possum, doing its level best to get away from me. I waited politely for a few moments, then went ahead and threw the bag into the Dumpster, apologizing to the 'possum as I did. It was well after midnight at this point--I couldn't wait all night for the 'possum to decide what it was going to do. It froze on the fence as I tossed my trash, then crawled onto the wooden utility pole and as far away from me as it could get.

I'd finally whittled the pile down to a few larger pieces of whatever and begat carefully removing those, even shoving the pile across the floor to spread the debris out and maybe even scare the rodent out into the open. But when the final piece of trash was removed, there was no rat to be found. Had it escaped, or merely run under some other piece of furniture? I searched beneath the shelving, the dresser and the bed (again), but nothing was found...until Olivia darted behind the bedroom door and chased the retreating gray/brown form through the hall and into the bathroom.

Finally, a bit of luck. The bathroom of La Casa del Terror was the most secure enclosed space in the whole apartment--the door was flush with the floor, and there were very few places to hide except for behind the trash basket or under the radiator. I grabbed the plastic storage container I use for my movie tickets, tossed Olivia out into the hall and closed the door. This was between me and the rat, which was now behind the radiator, cowering and letting forth occasional squeeks. It was terrified. That made two of us.

I grabbed the plunger and, with handle end turned toward my quarry, began gingerly poking under the radiator, hoping to drive it out into the open and trap it beneath the plastic container. Each time I poked, it shrieked in fear and lunged at the handle. It was getting aggressive. Fear does that. It was beginning to look like I'd have to kill the rat. No one would blame me if I did. I was defending my home and my cats. But...I hated killing anything. Even a spider in my bathtub will get my best effort to escort it to safety. So I stopped poking and started sweeping with the plunger handle. This made the rat run from its hiding place and bolt across the white tile to the narrow space between the shower wall and the wooden sink enclosure.

Good news, bad news: The rat was now trapped--the walls were too sheer for it to climb or leap out--but the plastic storage container was too wide for the space by about half an inch on either side. I quickly opened and closed the bathroom door, tossed aside the plastic container and grabbed the first container I could find that looked big enough to safely trap the rat, but small enough to fit in the narrow corridor--a plastic beer stein left over from a Lincoln Square Oktoberfest.

When I returned to the bathroom, the furry body hadn't moved, so I laid the stein on the floor and slid it along the tile until it trapped the rat against the back wall, leaving in nowhere to go but into the stein. Then I grabbed a lid that looked like it would fit over the opening, slid it down against the back wall and pressed it down. The rat bounced around inside the stein and squeeked loudly, but to no avail. It had been captured. The battle was over. I had won.

I walked quickly through the living room and into the front stairway, where one of my neighbors happened to be coming in and was more than happy to hold the downstairs door open for me as I ran to the front sidewalk and chucked the plastic beer stein, lid and all, down the street like a live grenade. It hit the lawn just shy of the alley and bounced, throwing the rat, now returned to the form of a distant silhouette, out onto the street. That was the last I saw of it.

Wearily, I trudged back up the stairs, explaining my odd behavior to my neighbor, who chuckled at my predicament (better me than him, I suppose). I was tired, but wired. And I still needed to reassemble my bedroom, dam up any holes in the walls that I suspected of being rodent portals, and e-mail my co-workers to let them know I'd be a wee bit late this morning.

I did get something out of the whole traumatic experience, though: My bedroom has never looked so clean and organized.