Rats

This is a piece I wrote a long time ago. Just reread it because I was desperate for something to bring to my writing group tomorrow. It was written before I quit swearing so much. Anyway, here it is. Rats.

________________

This is a story I’ve thought of telling many times but it’s always been so hard to get my arms around it, you know? Stories about rodents are just so very hard to craft well. Here’s my story in three parts:

Part 1

My story started when I saw a creature in my backyard lying in the snow under a tree as still as could be.

“That’s a rat,” I told my husband.

“It’s not a rat. It’s just a large mouse. We live in the city. There are mice,” he answered, waving me off.

“Mice aren’t that big. It’s a rat. There’s a dead rat in our yard. If there’s a dead rat in our yard, there’s probably a live rat in our house!” I was starting to get that tone I get when I know he’s waiting for me to move to another topic, one that will require less work on his part.

So because my husband is basically gallant, especially when pressed, he picked up the dead creature in the backyard with a shovel and put it in our big green City of Milwaukee plastic garbage cart.

Then he said, “Fine, if you think it’s a rat, I’ll call an exterminator tomorrow and have them come out here. But, remember, I’ll be gone so you’ll have to deal with them yourself.”

The next morning I dropped him off at the airport for his annual weekend with his best friend. This year, they were going to Catalina Island. I was going home to the very large dead mouse in my garbage cart and the exterminator who was coming the next day.

That night I took out the trash. Heaved open the lid of the garbage cart and right away saw it, a 3-inch wide hole chewed right through the side of the cart.

Holy crap, I thought. Not only is this not a mouse, this is a live rat, a live, motherfucking rat that is running around out here with me in the damn dark or already in my house waiting for me with his big awful teeth and horrible tail. I hate my husband already.

Part 2

Things got worse before they got better.

The next day, the exterminator’s truck pulled up in front of the house. The driver got out and put on his sandwich sign which said in 2 ft tall letters: THERE ARE RATS IN THIS HOUSE, RIGHT HERE WHERE I’M PARKED.

I met him on the front porch and we walked around the house. I told him about the Lazarus rat that had been dead but came alive in our garbage cart. I asked him if he could catch the rat. And kill it with something – poison, a shovel, a rifle.

He said. He SAID. (And I will remember these words on my deathbed. While the grieving family waits for me to give them parting words and spiritual guidance, I will see the exterminator with his clipboard, the name stitched on his shirt (Jerry) and the policeman flashlight hanging from his belt. Words to live by: You thought there was just one fucking rat, Jan, and there were HUNDREDS.)

That’s right. That’s what Old Jer said, “Ma’am, you don’t have A rat. You probably have a couple hundred rats. I would say there’s probably two or three hundred rats going in and out of your basement.”

We went in the basement. It creeped me out even though I was with Jerry and his big boy flashlight. My husband should be doing this, bonding with Jerry and the rats. That’s why people fucking get married – to have an appropriate division of labor. But no, my husband is on Catalina Island having heart to heart talks with his friend while I’m in the basement with a uniformed stranger and 300 rats.

Jerry started flashing his light – this corner, then that one. “See, that’s where they’re getting in.” My buddy Jer explained how the rats had a network of tunnels underneath the house that led to burrows into the basement. He pointed out the gnaw marks with the tip of his pencil and I could see how the rats’ little sharp wicked teeth had drilled through the wall leaving little excavation mounds.

Jerry checked off all the things that attracted the rats: easy access because of the age of the house, stacks of magazines and newspapers, old furniture, paint brushes and rags, and a giant bag of dog food with, yep, little rat lip prints on the bottom corner. “When you get all this stuff out of here, I’ll come back and set the traps.”

I called my husband. “Ah,” he said, “there’s no way there’s 300 rats. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m not even sure there was one rat. Looked like a mouse to me. Just leave it and we can clean it up next weekend.” Now he was a rat denier and lounging around on Catalina Island. It was too much.

There was no way in hell I was going to clean the basement by myself or sit barricaded upstairs drinking Scotch while the rats raced in and out of my house and feasted on my Purina Dog Chow. But the only kid within reach, the one who had moved back in to the third floor bedroom, was my actor son Joe, gregarious, chatty, funny, and helpful, many things but not my rat man.

This job required his brother, the same brother who I actually would have killed with a shovel had he graced my front door during the previous three months. It was either deal with Nelson or wait a week.

I texted him: Nels. Come over tomorrow at 9. I need your help. And don’t ask any questions.

Part 3

Why Nelson? Don’t take this the wrong way but he’s my rat. You know how they say that only the rats and cockroaches would survive in a nuclear holocaust? Well, my son Nelson would be right there with them, making a sandwich and watching the only big screen TV to survive the blast. He wouldn’t wonder where everybody went. My other son, Mr. Social, would die without his friends. I am mother to them both, the miracle and mystery of adoption.

Nelson is oddly impervious to things that drive other people crazy, like spending his work day in a 2 ft. crawlspace installing fiberglass insulation that gets embedded in the skin of his arms. Are you getting me here? He’s not like me or you. He’s weirdly tough.

So I needed him to be the front guy. But he didn’t respond to my text. It made me furious. I had done so much for him and he could even fucking answer me when I asked for help. I texted again but got no answer. Now I despise this kid and his lousy father who just called to report about his bike ride with his friend around Catalina Island. He was tired, he said. I had no response.

Nelson was standing at the back door.

“What?” He looked out at me from the recesses of his black hoodie, my own personal Unabomber come to visit.

“We have rats.”

“Where?”

“In the basement. We have to get everything out.”

“Oh.”

We started, the three of us, me and my two 20-something year old sons. Hauling everything that could be moved out of the basement and making a huge pile at the curb in front of the house. Every now and then, I spied a brown flash running from the pile to our house or the neighbor’s house. I tried to act like we were setting up a garage sale and the hamsters had gotten loose.

Deep in the bowels of our basement, oh, so aptly described, I stood looking at the furniture and the paint brushes, papers, and rags, and at my sons, both with bandannas covering their mouths,  loading junk into garbage bags, trudging upstairs over and over again, and I thought what am I doing here, a nice Methodist girl from Michigan with two Nicaraguan men?

And then I thought of the prayer I heard my husband say at our table and sitting next to me countless times in the synagogue, “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us and enabled us to reach this season.”

And I thought to myself. Just stand with me, you guys. That’s all I ask. And that’s what I’ll do for you. In this basement, with the rats, and the junk, just stand with me. That’s all I ask.

Don’t ask me questions. Don’t judge me. Just stand with me down here in this awful 100-year old basement with the crazy ass rat colony.

And take care of me because I’m your mother.

And they did.