Rodent Jihad!
I’m going to come out and say it, we have a Rat Problem right here in River City, right here in our affluent community of East Sacramento. These gangs of aspirational rats have moved in and they’re trying to get a piece of our upper middle class lifestyle. I assume this is because we have some pretty high-quality garbage here.
My personal battle with the rats began a couple of years ago when I was sitting out in the backyard and several rats scurried across the patio, and I just sort of lost my mind, I went mental. “That’s it!” I said, essentially declaring war on the rats. A man can only be pushed so far. So like any good warrior I started my jihad with a bunch of research on the internet, and there are all sorts of solutions out there on these websites that have an armed militia sort of feel. I checked out various traps, mechanically clever contraptions, but just not ideal visually to have a killing apparatus right in the middle of your nice backyard beside the chaise lounges and party lights. I ended up ordering this rat poison, a big tub of it. I got the stuff from out of state, the stuff too hard core and toxic for liberal California. If you’re gonna do it, you gotta do it right. These are little blue wax cubes full of poison, and presumably something appetizing for the rats. They have a little hole in the middle where you nail them onto fences and other elevated spots, above where pets and children would be able to get at them. No need to kill any children, only the evil, nasty rats. Another thing about declaring war is that you’ve got to dehumanize your opponent. Well the rats aren’t human anyway, but you’ve got to diss them heavily in your own mind. They are brutal, deviant rodents, not at all part of god’s family. They are likely godless, as bad as the Taliban— the Sadam Hussian of the animal kingdom. So these little poison cubes worked great, and I’m killing rats left and right, like a boss. But after a while, as I am disposing of all the little rat bodies I realize that I’m now in the rat killing business. It’s a regular part of my routine. I’m like a fuckin executioner. And the other realization I have is that the rats can reproduce way faster than I can kill them—in my mind I’m seeing wave after wave of rats coming over the back fence. And I’m asking myself, “Is this the business I really want to be in?” And the answer is no. I’m not that guy. Most of the time, when I’m not triggered, I’m a pretty chill guy. And so I just let it go, and I guess I’ve learned to live with the occasional rat in the yard. About a year after this, my boss, Jeff, shared that he’s got a rat problem, and they are in his attic. This is an order of magnitude greater than my rat problem because they are stepping to Jeff inside his castle, breaching his interior space. To quote Lebowski, “This aggression cannot stand!” Jeff's pest guy kept saying he sealed all the openings, but they were still coming in. At this point he was quite frustrated. I shared with him my experience and the possibility of getting these little out-of-state blue poison nuggets. And we started noodling on the problem, referencing the wisdom of Karl Spakler, the deranged groundskeeper in Caddyshack, who sought to get into the heads of the gophers that were his nemesis. He advised: “My enemy is an animal, and whenever possible I’ve got to think like an animal…and look like one.” Jeff and I discussed other possible solutions. What about getting a badass outdoor cat, a cat with a criminal record and a bad attitude, like the Jackie Chan of alley cats who can take on 4 or 5 rats at the same time? Hmmm…maybe, but with an ultimate fighter cat there will likely be expensive vet bills. What about getting a barn owl? You know, build a little roost up under the eves of your house and sit back while that cute bird dive bombs the rats. Or what about a pet falcon. You could be like a Bond villain with a highly trained raptor on your arm. That majestic raptor is just sitting there calm as can be…until you give it the command…in a German accent, “Snell!” and he flies off and hunts down all the rats like a machine, killing with extreme prejudice. Seems like a lot of training time involved. And then I mentioned to Jeff I had seen online where coyote urine will keep the rats away. This could be the elegant solution we’re looking for, I thought. Of course Jeff, being a realist, raised some critical concerns. He asked, where are you going to keep all the coyotes? And more problematic, he asked, how are you going to harvest their urine without totally angering the coyotes? In problem solving, when the solution creates additional problems, I think they call that a compound problem. Well, Jeff finally got his attic sealed up. And my truce with the rats on Mission Way is holding steady, despite the occasional trespasser. This whole thing points up some universal truths about adversarial relationships: you’ve only got a few options: negotiate, fall back on superior fire power…or in the interest of not going totally mental you have got to learn to live and let live. 2024 |
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