A Mouse In The House

In the south deer hunting is still a popular sport. Some people love it, anxiously waiting for deer season to open and regularly cruise Bass’s Pro Shop for every new gadget ever invented for hunters. They keep pictures of Charlton Heston on their walls, and have bumper stickers about prying guns out of cold, dead fingers. Others hate deer hunting and cringe at killing Bambi. Growing up loving Bambi, I understand how they think of the little speckled guy every time a shotgun blasts. I understand their feelings. I also love venison.

The sweet cartoon character came to mind the other night while lying in bed I hear a scratching in the ceiling. I froze while the scratching get louder and moved across my bedroom ceiling. I thought it could be a cute little squirrel like Rocky or it could be a kitty like Garfield. But it didn’t take long lying their in late night terror to realize it was a rat.

Hearing it move across the ceiling, I bolted upstairs to my daughters room to see if it was attacking her while I had been frozen in fear down below, and opened her door to find her sleeping peacefully, unaware of the monstrous beast. Finding her alive, I ran downstairs to retrieve our cats to slay the beast. I picked up the bigger of the two cats, who weighs about 25 pounds and prefers to not move if he doesn’t have to. I opened the attic door and told him to go kill the rat. He looked at me with heavy lidded eyes and yawned.

Pushing him with my foot, I tried to get him to run into the attic. Cats are supposed to love chasing rats. Maybe he didn’t know that. So I told him. He meowed again and headed back downstairs and sat down near his bowl. He didn’t appear overly enthusiastic at saving my life. The other cat ran away.

In spite of my late night wanderings, nobody else woke up with the monster running around our attic. I cautiously went back to bed and, after a very long time, fell back asleep. The next day I told my husband what happened. He patted my sleepy head and told me I had been dreaming. Seeing my face, he amended that with the suggestion that he would put some traps in the attic just in case I hadn’t been dreaming. But that I had.

After sprinkling the attic with several types of rat traps and sticky traps, the next few nights we all went to bed with only me awakened repeatedly to the scratching and clawing over my head. The last night I lay frozen in my spot for hours, waiting for the monster rat to make it into the attic to certain death, or ready to spring if he fell through the ceiling and landed on my bed. The rat took his time and didn’t head to the attic. Unwilling to remain in mortal peril, I went to sleep on the couch.

After finally drifting off to sleep, I was awakened again to a deafening clamor from the upstairs hall. Realizing the rat must have been caught in the sticky tape, he was pounding back and forth on the attic door. I waited for someone to wake up. The pounding got louder. I was not about to go finish him myself. No one woke up and after forever the pounding stopped.

The next morning I dragged myself into the kitchen after a week of sleepless, rat filled nights. I told my husband and kids that I thought he was caught. How had they slept through it all? They opened the attic door in awe that their really was a rat and he really was dead. And sticky. And that I really hadn’t been dreaming.

I asked what would have happened if it had been a burglar pounding on the door and they had remained asleep? What if he had been stabbing me and they hadn’t even known. They smiled and said, surely as he had been stabbing me on the couch, my screams would have wakened them and they could have all run to safety. Surely the rat wasn’t as loud as I claimed.

But that night as I dragged myself into my nice comfy bed to finally get a quiet nights sleep, one thought crossed my mind. Maybe some people’s hearts break when they think of all deer as Bambi. But, although I was a Disney fan too, not once in the past sleepless week had I wanted mercy for Mickey.