They (I don’t know the gender and they may be nonbinary. This aside reminds me of the time Jon had a dream that our kitty Izzy was protesting for increased rights for Gay and Lesbian cats in our neighborhood. Anyway, let me start again).
They had been living with us for over a month now, pretty much since we got word we had to move. Our pack has been useless in helping us to relocate the invader. I guess they think any animal living in the house belongs here. This probably is an offshoot of training them to live with cats.
Rats or opossums or cats or any other moving being in our yard or outside, well, that’s another story, then the chase is on. Have I told you about the time they caught a teenage opossum playing dead in the front yard and brought it into the house and placed it gently on the couch to nap or maybe to try to resurrect it?
I was in my office which is near the front of our house. The front door was open and the doggies were in and out and doing their nightly thing of chilling out in the cool evening air and alternatively making loud announcements to the rest of the neighborhood. Suddenly the three of them were in, running to me at my open office door, my desk is right near the door, looking at me, running to the couch, running back to me, circling the couch.
“What in the ever-loving what have you all done now?” I asked as I got out of my chair.
Zoey showed me, she took me right to the dead-playing being. If you’ve never seen an opossum playing dead, let me tell you, they are really good at it, and I mean, REALLY good at it in a body flattened, eyes bulging out, completely still kind of way.
“Come on!” I told the three doggies huddled around me as they shared their find with me, “Let’s go outside!”
I ran with them out the front door and then quickly ran back in shutting the door behind me, leaving them outside so Jon and I could deal with the youngin on our couch. He’d come out of his studio at that point due to all the fuss. Gloves on, the opossum was gently carried to the backyard, which the doggies do not have access to due to our area being tiny and the rest of it, well, I’ll tell you all about that once we’ve moved.
Mission accomplished - opossum saved.
When it comes to the rat, they just can’t be bothered. I saw Sookie the other night go into an alert stance and swivel her head as she heard it rummaging around. Then she just sighed and put her head back down on the dog bed and went back to sleep, dreaming about chasing cats or rats probably.
The humane trap has been sitting out for weeks, first not set and filled with food for a week or so as the directions suggested. Rats are on the up and up when it comes to humans trying to catch them. After noticing that the bits of peanut butter and banana were consistently left untouched but the persimmons on our dining room table were being gnawed at, I scrubbed off the peanut butter and started using persimmons instead.
Success! The persimmon pieces were gone in the morning. I did this for a few more nights and then set the trap with the pieces of persimmon inside. Most of the persimmon was gone the next morning except the piece that would have activated the door to the trap.
Crafty rat!
The next morning, the same, but this time the piece of persimmon that should have closed the door to the trap was gone and the trap door was still open.
Drat!!!!
Then it got very quiet in the house, so much so that we thought the rat had perhaps vacated the premises through an open door, as we had already resealed all of the potential rat entrance points with steel wool (we hope).
Our landlord came home on Monday and spent the night in his unit for the first time in months. He’s been staying with his mother as she can not be left alone. I know this seems like a random piece of information, but we think it’s significant in the chain of events because this is how our minds operate.
We celebrated the idea that the rat had moved on until I found fresh evidence in my office on Tuesday morning. Gross. Our landlord left again at some point on Tuesday.
Tuesday night before going to bed, I looked at the empty trap on the kitchen floor devoid of any bait and just surrendered.
”Okay, rat, you win,” I went to bed without putting any persimmon pieces inside.
I woke at 7:00am on Wednesday to find the rat in the trap with the door to the trap closed.
Perhaps it was patience.
Perhaps it was the surrender.
Perhaps it was our landlord appearing and disappearing once more.
OR, perhaps it was that Jon and I watched Drennon Davis’s three-part series on his TikTok about trying to catch his rat in a house occupied by talking cats the night before the rat chose to get trapped. If you have not watched his talking cats, you are missing out. The similarities in his sitch with ours are stunning down to the opossums.
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Part Three
We have yet to uncover the magical outcome of this rat saga and as always, we are excited to find out. We have taken the messages of patience and surrender to heart along with the reminder that no matter what it is we are experiencing, we are never alone in it. There is always someone or many someone elses out there living it too.
Epilogue: Well, I thought I was done with this tale. However, this morning I picked up the freshly baked loaf of seeded sourdough bread I had gotten from Pinyon Ojai yesterday and noticed the bag had been chewed through and the bread had been munched on.
This is the first time in all of our years of encountering and negotiating with rats that we have not been able to achieve our goals - ie: rats vacated and we no longer invaded. I hear them in the attic and the walls every night. Our neighborhood is filled with them. I do not want to have to resort to anything lethal so I’ll continue to keep negotiating with them, but it does look like this is another indication that we are leaving this house.
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We have pack rats!!! Outside, under my studio porch and in the shed. They set boobie traps for me, put cactus in my path and it's IMPOSSIBLE to get them to go to another spot. We have a heart trap, take them away and they come back! They chew wood, our shed walls.....
I love that you wrote Drats!!! Good word for the topic.
Ewwww. Soooo sorry! If I may offer some unrequested suggestions, have you asked the Fay to negotiate on your behalf for the rats to leave, or tried essential oil? Maybe peanut butter scent? I'd try peppermint since it usually is pleasant for people, seasonal and strong. Best wishes and keep us posted