the d-haus rat

i was making bread this morning (domestic, i know, but delicious!), when my housemate hilda informs my other housemate johannes not to step out of the kitchen because there's a large roach. instead of killing it, she lets it run into the kitchen. johannes watches the thing start to scurry across the kitchen but makes no move to kill it, so i walk over and smack the thing a few times with my handy rubbah slippah (locals, of course) until its rather dead.

in spring of 2009, my housemates and i noticed that we had acquired a new member to our coop. he wasn't voted in and honestly, no one wanted him there. but he just wouldn't go away. we named him reggie. he was our house rat (he might have been a mouse, but i digress).

we weren't very nice to reggie. we tried to kill him using a variety of different methods. eventually, reggie did die though. someone buried him in the back yard. i'm sure some nice things were said at the funeral, but i didn't attend, so i can't say for sure.

well, apparently reggie had a girlfriend. she has recently started frequenting our kitchen, and i must say, she is rather bold. she bolts across along the wall between the refrigerators allowing house members to see her regularly. we haven't been very nice to her either. in fact, we're trying our darnedest to kill her too.

i was sitting in the tv room working on my dissertation proposal this afternoon (actually making progress!) when katherine pokes her head in and informs me that there's a large animal in the kitchen. i ask if its beauty our house cat. she says no, so i get up to go see what it is, listening to what she's describing. while i'm looking for it she sees it run again, describes where, and i respond with a, oh, that's just the house rat. she's been running around a lot lately. apparently katherine hadn't seen her.

i got back to working on my proposal and am interrupted a second time when merih, one of our house managers, comes running into the room shrieking. this makes me a tad concerned that she's being chased by a vampire (afterall, the sun is not out), but it turns out that she too has just seen the ratmouse for the first time.

there is a point to these roach and mouse stories and its not just that i live like a college student. rather i realized today that in my old age, i have become my mother. when i was little (basically until i went to college) and would see the occasional spider in the house, i would start screaming and calling for my mom. mom would come, sigh, remind me that it was *only* a spider and then take care of the problem.

well, now i'm getting a taste of my own medicine because my housemates see roaches or rats and they come to me. i'm not the house manager. i'm a vegetarian who recently became vegan (its an experiment, i'm not sure how long it will last), and i don't have any idea how one should go about killing a rat. apparently though i give off the idea of knowing things, so now i am learning.

i suggested we go get sticky traps (don't worry, i did call my mom first to find out if she had experience with this sort of thing...fortunately for her, she didn't). i don't care if they (the sticky traps) are not humane (sorry). rats in the kitchen are gross and the other traps haven't worked. so merih and i went to the store to pick a few up. then, because merih didn't want to go anywhere near where said rodent had been, i put the traps down.

i was very proud of myself for doing this. i'm grateful i had good role model. thanks mom for teaching me to be resourceful...though i'm not sure i'd mention my apparent aptitude for killing critters to your friends.