Spouse one-ups husband on rat quick-thinking

We don’t live out in the country, but we do live on a hillside with sufficient open space around to encourage owls to nest, coyotes to prowl, and wood rats to multiply.

The owls do flybys of our porch, at eye level, at deepest twilight. The coyotes come and go, sometimes within 20 feet of the house, and we know when they are in the area by their pre-dawn chattering. Nothing we can do about any of that, but then the wood rats took a liking to the crawl space beneath the house.

They come up the slope, more than the owls care to catch, to the edge of the deck, through a little stand of hibiscus, then tear across to the house and down the access to the crawlspace. They are pretty big, and lightning fast. If one ran into your leg at full throttle, it might break your ankle. We saw them in the evening, at a predictable time when the light had been fading for about half an hour. We might be in the living room, watching television, with the French doors open to let in the breeze, and we would glimpse a darting movement – several darting movements, spaced a minute or so apart – from the access back to the hibiscus and over the slope.

Weekend before last, we decided it was time. We got rat poison at Dixieline and plotted our strategy. We didn’t want the critters dying under the house, so we set a tray in amongst the hibiscus just as the sun hit the horizon. Then we closed the doors so Gulliver couldn’t get outside and possibly find the tray. I put a rubber band around my wrist, to remind me to bring in the tray after about an hour and a half, when it was dark.

The first night, there was barely a nibble gone out of the tray. The second night, we couldn’t even find the tray. The third night we found the tray, and it was empty. Hee hee. I don’t like killing anything anymore, even spiders, but neither do I want wood rats to muscle up under the joists one night and carry the house down the slope.

Karen read on the box it took three days for the poison to work. I reasoned they would get sick sooner than that, too sick to get back to the crawlspace the next day. Meantime, the evening track meet disappeared. We entered a period of waiting. Saturday morning, we were sitting in the nook, drinking coffee, reading the papers, minding our own business. The dishwasher was running. From the direction of the dishwasher there came a small click. I didn’t hear it at first, but Karen did. For living things in the house other than ourselves, she has radar like a bat. “Did you hear that?” she said. “No,” I said. Then it came again. Again.

A series of clicks, like water dripping. It was coming from inside the wall, at eye level above the sink. I walked around to the other side of the wall, by the front door, and heard the clicks. They were spaced about 20 seconds apart. Then they stopped. It was Karen, several minutes later, who said in a low voice, “A rat in his death throes.” I wished bitterly that I had said it first. It sounded possible: the hind leg of the rat, jerking in the rhythm of the death spiral, kicking against the interior of the wall.

We should know by the weekend, if we’ll be drinking coffee out on the glider.