How Not To Kill A Rat

Let's get this straight; I hate rats. Those small, squirmy, creatures that make wheezing shrieks, and eat everything in sight, to the point of waste. The shameless, graceless rodents scurry noisily around, leaving in their incontinent trail, hard, black grains of excrement and pungent, odious fumes of their own urine. They are disgusting and annoying, gate-crashing your house, your kitchen, like area boys to a white tie dinner. And I have lost count of the number of things these wretched vermin have done to make me almost run crazy with rage.

Once it was my plastic gallon of vegetable oil. In an effort to be frugal, I had decided to buy some foodstuff in bulk, including vegetable oil. Now, at this point in time, I only spent Saturdays at home, every other day was spent at work, or travelling, or being groomed, so I had no idea how serious the vermin problem I had was. I confidently placed my 4-litre gallon of vegetable oil in the larder, along with the other food items and promptly forgot about it until the next few times when I had to cook. One day, as I was making my lunch or dinner or whatever, and I went to get the oil, I noticed a dark pool around the container. I only had to pick it up to see where the problem was coming from: these useless rats, probably in an attempt to get the oil, had bitten several holes into the top, bottom, and side of the plastic container, causing most of the oil to spill out! It wasn't just the waste that enraged me, it was the brazen nature of the 'attack' . Another time, it was my plastic container of rice. (One would think that after the incident with the oil I would be an permanent convert to metal, but the rice bowl had escaped attention thus far.) I picked up the one-and-half foot container one day, only to discover that these wretched creatures had eaten a gaping hole into the cover of the container. And this happened in one night! At first I underestimated the use of that hole to the rats, until I noticed that the rice I kept in that container had disappeared. Apparently the little bastards had been entering the container through the hole, and enjoying their ill-gotten meal, while I was assuming they were trying to make the container leak.

So I had tried various unorthodox means to get rid of these unwelcome vermin, especially after fumigation proved futile, when done independent of the other (rat-infested) flats . The first was a drug called Indocid, prescribed to me by the lady across the street who sold condiments. At first I was sceptical that an over-the-counter analgesic, mixed with food, was capable of rendering that restless, tiresome, pest anything but more energetic. Turns out I underestimated the power of the drug- and the stench of a dead rat in the ceiling, behind the bed, and in all nooks, crannies, and crevices that you never knew existed, till a rat died there. My next trial drug was a powdery poison that my trusted taxi driver, Mr Sunday , bought for me. Unlike the former, this drug did not require that I add insult to injury, by mixing it with food. And it was very effective. The rats died and shrivelled up. The problem was that the rats did not know it; even though they died when they ate it, they were attracted by something in the powder, and kept coming back for more. (I mean it's not like the rats say to themselves 'let's try to avoid Chili's house o, Cousin Abe and them died there when they ate that powder that she placed on the ground'. They do not have small heads for something.) During that time, when I went into the kitchen at night, and turned on the light, I would see grandpa, grandma, mother, father, aunty, uncle, and baby rats scampering in all directions. It was so overwhelming, one night, that I wept shamelessly.

You can therefore understand my joy when I came across the glue trap; a rat trap that requires no bobs and bits, no food from my pantry, and leaves the dead rats where you catch them- pure heaven. (I first heard about this glue trap years ago in a story involving a former colleague of mine and a court in the US. Apparently, she had used the regular trap to catch mice in her apartment, and was sued by her neighbours, I think, for cruelty to animals. To them the glue trap which works by sticking any part of the rat's body placed on it in a very adhesive glue, until it starves to death, was more humane. Armed with this information, I bought two sets of the trap, with a clear conscience. But I digress.) I waited for an opportune time to use the trap, a time when I felt the god-forsaken rats would congregate for what seemed like their Monthly General Meeting, and I would trap as many as possible. When I found such a time, I carefully placed the trap near the garbage bin, turned out the kitchen lights and went to wait.

A few hours later, alerted by the shrill shrieks of the rats, I walked to the kitchen and turned on the light. My trap had imprisoned one Papa rat, and one baby rat. Upon sensing my presence, 'Papa' made a useless attempt to run, but its legs couldn't be moved. It tried again and again, with the same result. I was overjoyed. I moved close to thetrap and said to it, 'good for you,go now,let's see', after which I promptly shut the light and went away. Two hours later, I came back to the kitchen again, unable to resist another opportunity to gloat at my prey . Imagine my surprise when I turned on the light and saw only 'baby'! That shameless 'Papa' had somehow managed to break free, and, without even attempting to help the little one, ran away. Can you imagine the agbaya? 'Baby', on the other hand was having a hard time, struggling to escape from his sticky quagmire. With every move it made, because of its limited motor skills, it would entrap itself, by bending its legs into an unnatural position and getting them stuck. I was torn. God knows I would never touch the blighter with anything shorter than a pole, but watching the silly little thing suffer so much was equally as uncomfortable for me. I just stood and stared at the rat for a while, then turned off the light and went to bed. But I couldn't sleep. I would see the poor creature twisting itself deeper into its death. Which kain wahala be dis?, I asked myself. After a while I finally found rest and I fell asleep. In the morning, my first port of call was that trap. The rat was still alive, but battling very weakly. Even though I gave them all night to decide, those cowardly, older, agbaya rats still had not made any attempt to either give themselves up for the poor thing, or help it escape. In disgust I picked up the box, shut it and dumped it in the garbage, feeling at that moment, a tiny bit of the sentiment in the Holocaust Jews creed 'never again'.

I'm gonna get a cat, that's my solution now. Let someone or something else do the dirty work. My only fear is that I might find the dirty work lying next to my pillow ; the phrase 'what the cat dragged in' originated somewhere, you know. What can I say, you can't win 'em all.



Chili!

Before I forget, I must pay my dues. A shout out to my blog publicists. Do your job o!

Comments

Artsville said…
Very interesting reading, it cracked me up. But please could you increase the font size? Merci.
Chili Pepa said…
Thanks Artville, for dropping by. I have tried to increase the font size and if you notice, it is a bit bigger. But I guess this template can only go so far as far as fonts are concerned. But I'm working on it.

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