The Rat

I found out this week that there are actually 5 of us living in our home: Jenny, Meagan, Julia, ErinStacy and the rat.

It began, I think, on Sunday night. Julia came into the kitchen on Monday morning and noticed that someone had taken a huge chunk out of the fresh, ripe avocado we purchased the day before. Now, Jenny is usually not THAT hungry to just take a chunk out of an avocado, and I would certainly have eaten the entire avocado and destroyed the evidence. So, upon closer examination, we noticed that there were little poops on the table as well. Certainly not ours (I prefer to use the washroom). There was no other conclusion to be drawn except that we had a rat.

That evening we put out lots of rat poison, carefully mixed in with some wonderful tasting chicken bones and rice. We waited.

First thing on Tuesday morning, we rushed into the kitchen. Sure enough, the rat had eaten the chicken bones, rice and avocado, but seemed to have eaten around the red power-packed poison pellets. We also learned that morning that he likes to eat dish clothes. Go figure.

Now, I have to confess. I know that pride is a bad thing but there is just no way in He** that I was going to let an uneducated Tanzanian rat outsmart me. So, Tuesday night I mixed up another batch of rice, avocado and chicken. Only, this time, I carefully crushed each and every little red pellet into a fine powder and mixed it on it. Oh...it looked GOOD!

All I will say is that last night, we were NOT visited by the rat. Perhaps he had a date; perhaps he was tired and went to bed early. Or, just perhaps, he had met his end the night before. (Of course, we hope that he did not meet his end like the previous rat who got the best of us by dying in the lounge. Now that was a smell)