Maria Wulf Full Moon Fiber Art

Every time Bud barked, Jon got up and went downstairs to see if what was going on with him and the rat.  I heard Bud bark too, but I decided to leave it to Bud till the morning.

Around 5am, there were sounds coming from downstairs that I hadn’t heard before.  That’s what got both Jon and me up.

When I got into the kitchen, the refrigerator was moved away from the wall enough for Bud to have shredded the cardboard backing that covered the fan and motor.  Dryer sheets that I had put on the floor to keep the rat away and bits of cardboard were scattered all over the floor.  And one of the metal tubes (I don’t know what they are) was actually sticking out of the back of the fridge.

There were also rat dropping on the floor.

I guess the rat thought it had a pretty good thing going when it found all those crackers and stored them in the back of the refrigerator yesterday.  Maybe she was even thinking of making a nest there.

Bud did his job last night holding the rat captive in the back of the fridge.  Now we just had to figure out how to get her out of it.

As soon as I let the dogs out, the rat saw her chance.  “There she is.” Jon said as she ran from the kitchen into the bathroom.

Jon closed the bathroom door.  “I’ll get it,” Jon said.  He hadn’t gotten dressed yet, and armed with a broom and dust pan he went into the bathroom closing the door behind him.

After a bit of banging and clanging, I went into the bathroom too and Jon told me the rat had run under the baseboard heater.  “There it is,” he said, pointing to the rats tail sticking up from the baseboard writhing back and forth, “Grab it.”

I was close enough to grab it, but there was no way I was going too.

There are some things that I’m squeamish about and a rats tail is one of them.  “I’m not touching that,” I told Jon and he reached down to get it.

But the rat was too quick and now hunkered down out of sight.

That’s when Jon decided to take a shower.

I wouldn’t want to be naked in the bathroom with a rat, but Jon wasn’t bother by the idea at all.  He actually had a conversation with the rat telling it he was going kill it.

When Jon got out of the shower, I went into the bathroom with a box.  I took the cover off the baseboard and the rat ran out.  We have a very small bathroom with no other place for the rat to hide or escape.  I was able to throw the box over the rat as she ran.  Then I got another piece of cardboard and slipped it under the opening of the box.  I turned the box over and closed it up over the extra piece of cardboard, not giving the rat a chance to slip out.

Now I had the rat in the box, but I couldn’t imagine how we would kill it.

Jon said he would shoot it, but I wasn’t thinking straight and pictured Jon shooting the rat in the box in the house.  Of course that makes no sense, but that’s the image that came into my head.

“I’ll take it into the woods,” I said.   Jon suggested drowning her in the pond, but I knew I couldn’t do that.

I’m fine putting traps in the house that quickly kill mice and rats.   I’ve done it for years.  And I don’t mind taking them out of the traps once they’re dead either.

But I don’t want to kill them myself.

I just couldn’t imagine a quick death for the rat, so even though I know that relocating a rat doesn’t work, they just come back, I was determined to put this rat way out into the woods and hope she didn’t come back.

As I climbed up the hill and over the stream,  I tired to imagine drowning the rat, my mind wouldn’t go there. Instead  I thought of how the rat had survived the night, hiding from Bud and how scared she must be.   I though of how the hunter in Snow White couldn’t kill her and brought back a boars heart to the Witch instead.

I silently spoke to the rat, telling her this was her chance to get away.  That if she came back she’d be killed.  And I felt like a hitman in a mob movie.

Over another stone wall and on the other side of a marshy pond, I opened the box and the rat jumped out and ran in the opposite direction of the farm.

Maybe I thought, she was a he, without babies to get back to.  Maybe he would do what rats don’t and not come back.

As I got closer to the farm, I heard Jon calling me.  He standing at the Gulley Bridge, rifle in hand and Zip at his feet.

I think that was more shocking than the whole rat incident.   It was all so incongruous.  Jon in the woods, with a rifle and cat.

But it’s also when it dawned on me that it would have made sense for Jon to shoot the rat while it was in the box and the box was on the ground.

Then Zip surprised me even further by walking over the Gulley Bridge to greet me as if he did it everyday.  And I guess he does.  I saw cat prints in the mud on the other side of the bridge yesterday.

I guess I don’t know as much about his territory as I thought I did.

I knew Jon was annoyed that I let the rat go. But by the time he got back to the farmhouse and wrote about it all (while I took a shower without a rat to keep me company) he was seeing my side of things and even loving me for it.

It was a wild morning.  And when it was all done, I gave Bud a special treat and told him that he’d done a great joy and to get some sleep.

If the rat does come back I hope she or he does it quietly and stays out of the house.

Bud’s fast asleep on his little wicker bench in the living room.  I told him he’d better get some rest because he’s going to be on Rat Patrol tonight.

This morning when I walked into the kitchen, two empty boxes of crackers were on the floor.  And the other things on the counter, where they had been, were all knocked over.

I knew right away that the rat was back.

The first thing I did was check the stove.  There was no evidence that the rat was anywhere near it.  The dryer sheets I had stuffed under and in it were still there.

We got a new stove a month ago because a rat had pulled the insulation out of the old one.  She also left dropping in the walls of the stove and every time we turned on the oven the smell was unbearable.

When we got the new stove, Jim, who sold it to us, told us that Rats don’t like the smell of dryer sheets.  So I stuffed them into the runners of the drawer under the oven and on the floor under the stove.

As I cleaned up the mess, Bud came into the kitchen and started sniffing around the refrigerator.  When he didn’t quit, I got the message.

I pulled the fridge away from the wall and found a couple of crackers under it.  But Bud kept sniffing at the back where the motor is, so I unscrewed the cardboard backing.

Half a box of crackers were piled up behind the fan.

I cleaned them out and Bud was still sniffing around. This time I moved the fridge even further away from the wall and found more crackers under it.

I thanked Bud for his help and was relieved to see him leave the kitchen as I mopped the floor.

But he didn’t go far.  Now he was sniffing around the clothes dryer.

I pulled the dryer away from the wall expecting to see another stash of crackers.  But instead I found a small hole chewed in the wall where the dryer vent came up from the basement.

I had successfully plugged the hole in the bathroom where the rats had come up the first time in late winter.  Now I knew where they had made a new doorway into the house.

I stuffed the hole with steel wool then cut a piece of metal flashing, fit it around the dryer vent and screwed it to the wall.

I also put dryer sheets around the hole and on the floor in front of it.

Tonight we’ll leave Bud out of his crate once again.  I’m certain it was his presence that kept the rats from coming back the first time they showed up a couple of months ago.  I know it wasn’t the traps because after we caught the first three, they never went after the bait again.

Zip’s doing a good job of keeping the rat population down outside the house.  And Bud is doing his part inside.

When it comes to rats inside the house,  I’ve come to trust Bud completely.  I think we make a good team.

I did my part this morning and he’ll do his part tonight.

These days the hens are up early.  It’s as if they’re just waiting for me to open the door of the chicken coop.

They follow me into the  muddy barnyard where there are lots of good insects to eat.  Or maybe they’re expecting me to feed them the way I feed the donkeys and sheep.

And they deserve it too.

We’re getting two or three eggs everyday.  White hen is about ten years old and she still lays eggs, especially this time of the year.