A Rat Tale.

So I might have neglected to mention that a few weeks ago, Toby discovered that his garage (which is not connected to the house - it's in the back of our yard) was infested with rats. RATS. Not a mouse. Or mice. Or even A rat. RATS. Plural. And BIG.

They were living in the walls and feasting on the dog food...and making a house in the fridge out there...and in the sofa... So when Toby moved the fridge out away from the wall for some reason and TWELVE giant rats scurried out, that began the Rat Wars.

So, fast forward a month and he has since gutted his garage, torn out the walls, gotten rid of the fridge and the couch and all of the work benches and rebuilt them and saturated it with Rat Poison.... the garage is doing well now.

But those rats have to go somewhere, right?!?! We have found LOTS of dead ones in the yard...and we have set bait stations all over the yard and outside of the house...It seemed to be under control.

So, yesterday morning I was getting ready for a GREAT weekend. I was so excited that NOTHING was on the calendar except to go see Sex and the City with some friends at 5pm. My Mother in Law was coming over to watch Stella and Kendall. Kim, Julie, and Katie were all coming over to go with me...and Heath and Chris and Toby were going to do the usual - drink beer and play pool in the garage. I was hoping to run some errands in the mornings and just get some stuff done. Nothing crazy.... Just take it easy and ENJOY a NON-eventful weekend.

Well, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! How DARE I think of doing that.

I get up and start a cup of coffee and hit "start" on the dishwasher. I'm standing there waiting for my coffee when I notice the dishwasher is leaking. Damn! Toby looks at it and thinks it's the seal around the front but he knows nothing about dishwashers, so I call Dad and he comes over for a visit and a peek at the dishwasher. He also thinks it's the seal around the front so he suggested I clean that off and get some of the grit off of it - maybe it will seal better because maybe the dirt is making it lose suction....blah blah. So he leaves and I do that and cut the thing back on and LAY ON THE FLOOR (this is important for later...) and look between the dishwasher and the cabinet to REALLY look at where it's leaking and I notice it's coming from the BACK of the dishwasher and is pouring out between the dishwasher and the cabinet on the floor. In other words, it is not dripping from the front of the dishwasher.... it's the back. So I tell Toby that and he says "that's impossible! The only way for it to come out is the front..." so he humours me and pulls the dishwasher out from under the countertop into the middle of the kitchen floor to look back there and

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THERE IS A GIANT RAT LIKE GIANT LIKE A FOOT LONG AND I SCREAM SO LOUD AND RUN INTO THE LIVING ROOM AND JUMP UP ON THE COUCH.

I mean, SHIT!!

So, this rat runs under the fridge now. I call Dad in a PANIC and yell at him to come back that we found the problem with the dishwasher it's a GIANT RAT!!!!!!! With our panicked selves, we looked at the dishwasher and that f-ing rat had chewed all of the wiring and tubes - no wonder it was leaking! And apparently he had set up homestead there for awhile because he had PIECES of bread and all kinds of food - probably from our trash can. UGH!!! I'm cringing while I type this. Toby said that "rats" to him are like "snakes" to me. I doubt it - because if that was the case and we had a snake living in the kitchen, there would already be a for sale sign on our front yard and we'd be living out of my Mazda Tribute.... but he is pretty worked up too.... We're both just in a frenzy.

So, Dad comes running across the yard with a bb gun wrapped in a big black garbage bag. LOL

I put up the baby gate to corral the rat in the kitchen. Stella and I go lock ourselves in the computer room and listen.... I swear I wish I had a video camera of what happened next. I can't see what's going on but I can hear it. It went something like this:

Dad and Toby in the kitchen "rocking" the appliances trying to get the rat to come out.

Toby: THERE IT IS!
Dad: screams
Toby: Wayne! Gimme the gun! Gimme the gun!
Dad: I'm trying to load it! How do you load it?
Toby: Give it to me. I had one years ago.
Dad: I got it loaded - here you go!
Toby: (Lifts the gun to shoot the rat but the trigger won't pull) SAFETY! The safety is on! How do you get it off!!!
Dad: THERE! THERE!
Toby: SHIT!! Where'd he go?

Rat: What a pair of clowns.

So anyway, the rat got away. The kitchen is OUT OF CONTROL. We're both shaking and nervous and grossed out and depressed. Plan of action? Ignore it.

We label the kitchen "out of commission" and just leave the baby gate up and go back to our plans. Zana and Erik arrive to keep the girls...and the big girls get in the car and go to the movies. The boys did their garage thing.

The movie was PERFECT. I loved every second of it. EVERY SECOND. I SO miss that show... I'm ready for Part II of the movie!!! And I ate enough popcorn mixed with goobers to last me for years and years... (It had BEEN years since I ate that wonderful concoction. Shoot, it had been years since I went to the movies!!)

So, we get home and just hang out with friends and chill out.

Everyone leaves and Toby passes out on the couch and I go lay in the bed and read. I cut out my light around midnight and it wasn't even 5 minutes before I hear rustling in the kitchen. Then stuff being knocked over.

I go running into the living room and whisper/scream: "TOBY! RAT!!" and his drunk ass says "I am in no condition to deal with that now." So, ok. I went back to bed and listened to my kitchen get turned upside down.

Dad had gone out to buy 2 glue strip traps and a snap trap that we had set up earlier in the day... so in my head, I was envisioning this rat being caught on the glue trap and knocking itself around trying to get loose.

Um... No.

When I got up this morning, I looked in there and the rat wasn't caught at all. The traps were all untouched. That thing was literally just running around knocking shit over! The stuff that usually sits in the window sill was on the counter. It had even gotten into our saltines. I swear that thing was like "Screw ya'll. This is MY crib!"

So, today we have unloaded the dishwasher and handwashed everything. We have removed the dishwasher and thrown it in the pile of old wood and construction from the old deck that needs to go to the dump. (When we catch this dude, we will celebrate by going to get a new dishwasher. Dammit.) And we also bleached the entire kitchen from top to bottom. We went to Home Depot and bought 8 more of the snap traps to "saturate" the area.

Toby said that he is going to put so many traps in that kitchen tonight that we shouldn't even LOOK at it because our eyes might get trapped.

He said "the war is on" and that rat is going to GET IT tonight. I hope so.....