The Rat From Hell

The Rat From Hell

ratThe Rat From Hell met her demise shortly after Howard pulled her out from under the refrigerator, about a week after we returned from France. Next we pulled the refrigerator away from the wall to clean up anything else left behind, but the refrigerator never worked right afterwards. I defrosted it by hand several times but finally called a repairman in September.

She had chewed through a wire so the refrigerator no longer defrosted automatically. Repair bill: $232 and many lost hours defrosting and reading the appliance manual. I did, however, learn where the condenser coils are.

The rat got into the garage on Friday, April 27, a week before we left for France. Claude saw the rat after I entered the house and the garage door was coming down. His instincts kicked in and he went after the rat one second too late. He did not get far enough into the garage to trigger the safety beam that would have stopped the garage door. Claude’s fatal hunting accident was a cat-tastrophy.

I was so upset by the sudden loss of Claude that it took me a couple of days to realize there was a rat in the house. I made sure there was no food available the rat when we left in the hope that it would go away by itself, but the rat nicked the cashews I was planning to take with me and enjoyed them while I was in Paris.

The rat was still in residence when we returned. I got some mousetraps which were too small but klonked her hard enough to daze her. That’s when she hid under the refrigerator.

I did not enjoy cleaning up what was left of the cashews after they had gone through the rat. And I had to throw out a slipcover. It was disgusting and depressing.

Total cost: Claude the cat that we loved, $232 for appliance repair, many hours defrosting and reading the appliance manual, one chewed-through slipcover and few weeks of depression over the creepy ickyness of it. I suppose it could have been worse. I am grateful to Howard for following his hunch to check under the refrigerator. I would not have looked there.

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