The persistent rat

I've been getting frequent visits from a very persistent rat that insists on trying to get into my house. Because there's a gap between the bottom of my back door and the floor, it could get in through there, and I wanted a contractor to come and cover up that gap to prevent the rat from coming in, but he was always so busy and it was difficult to get him, so I had figure out ways to stop the rat from coming into the house

Initially I put a big piece of cardboard to block off the gap, but it could chew through it, even after I kept fixing it up and making it so thick, there's no way it would have gotten its teeth around the edge...it still managed to chew through.

It would also make its way in through my ground floor drain pipe in the bathroom. Even when I closed the bathroom door (it's one of accordian folding doors), the bugger even chewed the corner of the door and pushed it enough to get it open!

So I bought rat bait, which initially it ate, but then wised up and stopped eating it. So that didn't work either.

Finally I picked up a bunch of bricks and used them to block off the whole bottom of the door, which finally did the trick in preventing it from coming in through the door.

However, it didn't stop it from somehow climbing in through my kitchen WINDOW. Yes, the freakin' window. I saw it with my own eyes, and I couldn't believe it. The only way I think he could have done it is if it had climbed up my clothes dryer. Which means it would have climbed onto my clothes. Which really freaked me out.

So I decided enough was enough of this crazy rat. I didn't know why it kept insisting on trying to come in, considering I don't keep any food on the counter, and it must have some super sense of smell if it was coming for the food IN my drawers. Anyhow, it didn't want to, but decided it was time get a mousetrap (RM10 from ACE Hardware, in case you want one).

And I finally caught the little bugger.




Then came the problem of what to do with it. Of course, after all the trouble it caused me, I jokingly considered many options for how to make it suffer.  Like using to lighter to singe its feet. Or letting my dog or neighbourhood cat paw at it for an hour or so, which would terrify it and hopefully give it a heart attack. Or throwing it from a flyover onto a busy highway. Or make it eat nothing but rat poision until it got so weak, then throw it into the river. Or just leave it out in the sun to overheat.

In actual fact, I felt terrible at the thought of killing it, especially since I kept a family of gerbils as pets, and those are pretty much smaller versions of rats. So killing it felt kind of like killing a pet gerbil. Plus, seeing how the rat had consistently managed to circumvent whatever obstacles I put to try and stop it from coming into the house, it was obviously rather intelligent. Not to mention kinda cute.

But I couldn't let it go coz' I didn't want it terrorizing other people's houses. The idea of even keeping it as a pet even crossed my mind, which was of course a really bad idea considering all sorts of possible diseases it's carrying.

Eventually, I just did it in the most humane and fastest way I knew how, which is drowning. Doing it was not easy for me. I filled up my bin halfway, which wasn't enough to cover the cage, so while the cage was in there, I filled it up with more water, and the poor fella was hanging onto the top of the cage for dear life. A couple of times I took out the cage to see the terrified drenched rat clinging to the cage looking at me with its beady eyes, which did not make it any easier for me. But I did it anyway, and dumped the cage right back into the bin of water, which was full enough to cover the whole cage. And I was pacing around cursing the rat for being so persistent and forcing me to do this to kill it.

It died pretty quickly from the drowning, so I wrapped up the body, washed up my rubbish bin and chucked the bag in for garbage collection. It was kinda sad.

Hope I don't get any more crazy rat visitors, coz' I don't wanna be doing this on a regular basis!

The persistent rat