Ratatouille in Real Life (Part 3)

Have I mentioned the fact that I absolutely hate the Laundromat. To the point that I think I would have about 8 loads and no matching clothes before I would schlep all my clothes out to my car and head over for a marathon session at the Genesse Fluff and Fold.. as nice as that sounds and all, Pet Louie and I needed to have a chat.

I was not about to let him keep me from enjoying my washer and dryer (not for more than a month at least).. for goodness sake this was ridiculous... surely he could have gone to torment someone else by now. So I braved it… of course only in broad daylight. I came to the conclusion that rat and I could peacefully co-exist as long as he didn’t try to make his presence known while I was doing my laundry. Alycia still refused to do laundry in there.

So fast forward a couple months of me doing laundry without incident, when Alycia said that maybe we should set a trap just to be sure he was gone. I was pretty sure he was gone since I had done laundry in there about a 100 times and never once seen him. So once again call the male pal from out of town. We went to home depot and got the biggest rat trap known to man.. slapped a big hunk of peanut butter on the trap and set it out by the washer in the laundry area.

We decided to watch a movie and about a hour later there was a loud snap and some thrashing sounds come from the back patio. We flicked on the patio light and there he was in all is glory.. the hugest rat I have ever seen face to face (ok also the only rat I have seen face to face.. through a thick wall of sliding glass door thank goodness). Pet Louie’s body was about 10 inches long and tail about 12 inches and he was wearing that huge trap like a necklace. The trap had not done its full job, and he was still quite mobile. Unfortunately we had done very little contingency planning for this type of event and it was dark.. I did feel bad about leaving him there.. but I wasn’t about to risk my life and possibly get rabies… so we rationalized that the rat was would be dead by morning in which we could call the animal control people to pick it up? Hopefully they make house calls like this?