There is an urban myth that says that if you live in a large city, you are never more than six feet from the nearest rat. Having lived in Victoria for many years, I have had more than my share of rat encounters of the gross kind. One night my husband was out of town so I was taking the opportunity to watch excellent reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
When I opened the patio door to let the dog out at one point in the evening, I noticed a pair of beady eyes hiding behind my flower pots. With the sudden realization that there was a rat on the deck, channeling Buffy, I ran towards the disgusting little creature yelling: "Get away! Get away little rat!" The rat scurried away off the deck with my dog (and me) running after it.
This same rat made an appearance a few months later in its stalking campaign against me when I had some friends over to rehearse a bellydance that we were going to perform later in the week. In the middle of a Middle Eastern dance, the rat made a dash for it along the fence and five women in their late twenties started squealing like we were pre-teen girls. Again, I ran towards the rat yelling at it. In retrospect, I'm not sure why, in the face of mortal danger, my inclination is to run towards it.
My husband and our elderly tenant also had their own bonding experience over a rat. Our tenant, Bert, had chased a rat out of the garage and he had patched up the hole where the rat was getting in. He had been telling my husband about this when Mr. Rat made an appearance in the front garden. Neither Bert, nor my husband wanted to deal with the rat so they took turns debating who was going to trap it. What they were going to do with the trapped rat is irrelevant because one of them panicked and threw a recycling bucket in the rat's general direction and the rat was hit and died.
Yuck.
Since we've moved to Prince George, our rat encounters have been few. We hosted Christmas dinner the first year we moved into our house and because we do not have a second fridge, we didn't have a place to put the excessive amount of leftover Christmas goodies. So I placed a tray of treats in the barbeque and then promptly forgot about it. Some weeks later I found a cute little mousy bed snuggled between butter tarts and thimble cookies. In a brave moment, I kicked the barbeque across the patio and found Mr. Mouse poking his little head out the bottom of the barbeque. He left and then I had to fess up to my husband what happened. Then we had to buy a new barbeque.
Rats and mice share our urban dwellings and we should, I guess, learn to live with them. But I don't want them to be in my house, my yard, my deck or my barbeque.
Go away, dirty little rat.
