Rat #3

I was up tonight feeding one of the twins, when I heard a sound over by our desk.  My first thought is Rat, but then I assure myself that it's probably just the giant black moth (or witch doctor as some believe) that I saw in here last night before bed.  However if it had only been a moth I wouldn't be writing this post at 5am now would I?

Well I continued staring over there hoping to the moth just to be sure.  I saw something move, but still continued thinking it was the moth trying to get out.  Then I saw it move again, definitely not a moth.  There was a rat running back and forth on our window seal trying to get out.

I very calmly started walking to our bedroom to wake up Nick, but as I did so, it jumped off the window seal and I jumped on the couch.  I was afraid that if I moved anymore it would run away and we wouldn't find it.  I refused to take my eyes off of where I had last saw it.  Instead, I stood on the couch, tiny baby in hand, and yelled Nicks name, and pounded on the wall repetitively until Nick came out.

Nick stood there trying to devise a plan on how to kill it, when all of the sudden it made it's move.  It ran from under the desk to our door, back under the desk, back to the door, back under the desk, and then towards Mika and Eventz room where I lost sight of it.  At the exact second I lost sight of it, something touched my foot and I freaked out.  Turns out it was just one of the plastic dinosaurs my Mom sent down for Eventz a few days ago.

Nick threw our rat trap into their room hoping to catch it quickly, but once he saw it jump on Mika's bed, climb up the curtain, and hang out on the curtain rod, he knew this was not going to happen.  Eventz was already in our bed because he has been having trouble sleeping in his new room, so we woke Mika up and carried her into our bed and then called in some reinforcements, Toby, our dog!

Nick took all the dinosaurs my Mom sent down, and chucked them at the rat forcing it to come down! (Thanks Mom for the great toy, they came in handy).  Toby then chased it around the room for a while but wasn't getting anywhere, even with Nick poking under the bed with a broom stick.  I was on baby duty, since we now has 4 awake children at 4:30 am, and Nick was on door duty.  See their door doesn't have a handle (I assume for safety reasons, it was like that when we moved in) and so Nick had to stand there and hold it closed the whole time.  Since there was no handle though, he could peek through the hole and see exactly what was going on at all times!

After a few minutes of getting no where with Toby, I asked if we should pull out the big guns and bring in Roxy, our ferocious guard dog who cuddles up in a ball on top of our lawn furniture to sleep each night.  She might not protect us well at night, but at least she is good at killing rats.  We debated for a while because we were afraid that if we did she would either

A: get blood all over the place
B: destroy the room or
C: All the above.

However we had no other choice, so I called her in.  At the meer sound of me saying "Rat" she became very excited.  The rat was once again up on the curtain rod, so Nick chucked another dinosaur at it and quickly closed the door, but not quickly enough cause it had a chance to run across his foot first.  Luckily it stayed in the room though!  At this point I had moved from standing on the couch to standing on the kitchen chair so I was able to see this part of it.  I saw Nick hit the thing with the dinosaur and it fly/fall through the air.  Nick started laughing and said we should video tape this, so I grabbed the camera but before I did Nick opened the door.

THE GOOD NEWS:
Roxy killed the rat, didn't get blood anywhere, and everything in their room is still standing!

THE BAD NEWS:
This rat wasn't missing giant patches of hair, so whatever rat we half way cooked yesterday is still running around somewhere.

WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN?
Well obviously the rats aren't getting in through our gas line, so now we think that they are coming in through our windows.  See none of the windows here have glass, there are all just holes with two types of screens on them, one to keep bugs out and one to keep rats out.  For some reason a lot of the ones in our apartment only have the bug screens, and although there aren't any holes in them, they aren't stapled that well, so theres a chance that they are pushing them out and getting in that way.

In other words, Sampson and Rikerns will be coming to work in an hour and guess what their first project will be??  Taking down all of my screens, painting the bars (which is actually on their to do list as it is), and replacing it with both rat and bug screens, using a TON of staples to ensure that there is no possible way rats can get in there!!

For those of you into statistics:
Nick has killed 5 rats in our apartment
3 in the past week and a half and
2 while the last person lived here.

I realized after writing the last post that I may not have been clear on something.  I said that Nick killed 36 (37 now, he says he helped so he gets to share the glory with Roxy) rats.  I just want to emphasize that these are all RATS, not mice, but big long tail rats!!!

So, after these last few posts.....

Who wants to come visit us???