I Hate Rats

 The dreaded rats are back! 

For a long time, I had had no trouble with rats in the house. Yes, I had seen them occasionally, running along the gutter at the street side or creeping inside my gate now and then, but none had the temerity to actually enter my house--until a few weeks ago, that is, when the maid reported that one of the critters had been inside the cupboard under the sink, busy at shredding plastic garbage bags. She did not actually see the rat, but advised me to place a sticky trap in the area and buy new garbage bags.

Well, that sticky trap went untread upon for the weeks to come, such that I began to wonder whether some other culprit might have been behind the garbage shredding incident. Or perhaps the maid herself had shredded the bags for some inscrutable reason. 

Nonetheless, with no rats caught nor seen nor heard, I pretty much forgot the incident. 

Until yesterday. 

It was morning time still, and I was just finishing my breakfast and having a cup of tea when there arose a sudden clatter from somewhere in the area of the kitchen. At first I thought it was something outside, given that men are working every day on building the house next door and do very often cause various clatters to arise. 

Peering out the doorway, however, I discerned that in fact the noise was coming from the inside, and directly, on keener inspection, from beneath the sink. 

Rat! 

Yes, there he was, a big one too, snaking around on the surface of the superglue with which the trap is coated. The more they move, the more stuck they get. In their struggle, of course they eventually fall down, never again to arise. It remains only to shut the lid of the trap and thus smother the poor critter. This has actually always seemed a more cruel method than the old style metal bar traps that break the rat's neck, but oh well--they don't sell those here, and basically the only good rat is a dead rat anyway. 

Closer investigation of this area reveals that the rat must have come up through a pipe beneath the sink that leads to the drainage area beneath the street. This must be fixed. Especially considering that the construction next door is driving a lot of various creatures out into the open and in search of new dwellings. I'm determined that my house not become one of these, because, to put it very succinctly, I Hate Rats.