Wack the Rat

I'm gonna call this my last official night at the old Bellin homestead. The cable guy comes tomorrow. And even if I don't have a tv, I'll still have internet. And that should be enough to keep me entertained.

For the last six weeks or so, we have known that there is a mouse in the house. I witnessed it scurrying across the room and under a door in the basement. Since then it has attacked a spider plant (throwing dirt all over), eaten half a chocolate train, shorted out the oven, and done other assorted damage.

Today, I came across this animal in the kitchen. Making its way to who knows where. I looked at it and said, "I see you! I see you, mouse!" To which, if it could speak, it would have replied, "I am quite obviously a rat."

I continued calling it a mouse (thus taunting and confusing it) and it sidled off into the living room. There it hid behind the love-seat and I prowled around.

We may never have recovered from this dead-locked position, except that reinforcements in the form of my father arrived carrying a broom and a Swiffer. He gave me the broom and orders to terminate with prejudice. To which I replied, "I don't want to kill it. You kill it."

But the rat was flushed out by my father and it fell to me to finish the job. I felt very very terrible. But the deed was done. And the rat, like the parrot, is no more.

I would like to thank Wack-a-Mole for providing me with the skills required. As Densel Washington's character in Man On Fire (the movie my father and I were watching at the time) says, "There's no such thing as tough. There's trained and untrained."