The Random Rat

During the height of the pandemic, we had a mouse problem. Our cats would catch mice in the yard, bring them into the house, and the mice would get loose and hide. Eventually, we got rid of them. They either died or, when possible, were released.

Recently, we noticed that bananas and plantains in our fruit bowl were being nibbled at during the night. “We’ve got mice again,” Rob announced, and started setting out traps. It quickly became became evident that what we had this time was smarter than the average mouse.

This critter avoided traps, the lure of bits of cheese, and one night I glimpsed him scampering behind the toaster oven on our counter. He was too fast to get a sense of his size. The next morning, I remarked that the mouse might be tapping into Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic field to avoid entrapment.

So we decided to set up our spy camera in the kitchen, directed at the bowl of fruit, For the next two nights, the camera caught the critter – a rat, not a mouse – leaping onto the counter, checking out the bowl of fruit, then diving in. When I showed the video to our neighbor, she identified the rodent as a roof rat.

I was going to buy sticky paper and put it around the bowl of fruit so the critter would get stuck. But my neighbor talked me out of it. She’d seen a mouse trapped on the stuff and said it was awful, the animal struggling, squealing, in the middle of the night. No, thanks. So I bought a 99% guaranteed mouse trap, moved all the fruit to the fridge, cleared the counter, and aimed the camera.

The first night, the critter came out at 1:45, checked out everything, avoided the traps, and scampered up the wall and vanished through an opening between wall cabinets. Unfortunately, the video no longer appears on the camera footage. Rob blocked the space between the cabinets, so we’ll see what this guy does next.

I looked up the esoteric meaning of rats:

When a Rat appears as your Spirit Animal, the creature often brings a message about your career. Rat’s arrival in your awareness urges you to ask yourself, “Have you gotten lazy? Or are you working too much and forgetting hearth and home?” In either case, Rat comes prepared to help you by offering foresight and adaptive ability while directing change toward a creative solution.

Well, we’ll see.

When I told Rob I was writing a post on this rat critter, he laughed. “It’s random.”

Really?

P.S. Tonight, several months after I wrote this post, our cat, Beo, leaped through the open window in my office with qa giant rat in his mouth. Hey, guy, look what I caught! Fortunately, the rat was dead and we scooped it up and put it in the trash.