It’s Super Bowl Sunday. I don’t care, for despite going to the games of my boys I don’t follow it. I do have an interest in the commercials that come out, the internet can provide that to me now (see Mahalo) (Thanks Jason Calacanis)

But that’s not really what I want to write about this afternoon. What I want, maybe need, to write about is the rat that I killed this morning.

I’ve of course covered my fights with Order Rodentia, but while in the past I have only had to deal with the genus Mus, today I had to deal with the genus Rattus.

A week ago I was up really early, not feeling too well — I was up at about 5am when I saw a small rodent visitor in the kitchen. I made a halfhearted effort to catch it, but they’re fast and what kind of hope did I have of catching a rodent with a heavy Ajax technical book? None. A the time I saw him or her, he or she darted so fast I was not really sure what it was. I told Leah that I thought it was a mouse, but larger. I hesitantly told her my suspicion that it might be a rat, but how could it be? It didn’t seem of the right size to really be a rat, but then I was a poor judge of the size. Something common to today and that day was that it was raining quite hard each time.

The one bit of knowledge I had was that it was coming out from underneath the dishwasher. So that day I purchased large “tray” type glue traps, as well as some smaller mouse glue traps. Since I knew that it was coming from under the dishwasher I could simply place it under the front of the dishwasher, away from easily getting stepped on by people or by our bird, and maybe make a kill.

I actually have not thought about that one too much, though I occasionally have been hearing a metallic clanking near one of the ducts downstairs sometimes. When I make noise, the noise stops. But this noise is not frequent, so, no harm, no foul. We’ve had no other evidence than that — no droppings, no other evidence of rodents since last July.

One thing I feel bad about is that the area under the birdcage we’ve been laying a garbage bag as a catch for the seeds and shell hulls for the birds food. Cockatiels are messy eaters, and since we have not seen bugs or vermin, and clean up — oh, biweekly — we figured it was not a problem. In retrospect I imagine that the smell of these bird food grains were a powerful attractant. Anyway, so that’s the background for this morning.

Jukebox JT said back in July, in response to my using glue traps to catch some mice — he was dead right about this.:

glue traps = bad. Snap traps end the torture in a second. Glue traps prolong the agony for hours, a mouse fighting for its life until it start hemorrhaging and spitting blood.

What’s next is pretty grisly. I’ll say that the rat is dead, and the area under the birdcage is now clean and will be ever more. You can stop here if you want, otherwise, read on.

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