Rats in the Hood
There are rats in the hood.
No, really; there are rats in my hood.
I spent last weekend cleaning rat poop out of our sizable garage, coming to the obvious conclusion that a family of rats is living somewhere in the garage area. I was unable to determine precisely where they made their home, unfortunately, so I decided to purchase some rat termination equipment.
Mrs. Supreme Aglet insisted that we purchase the sort of traps which preserve the productive lives of rodents who crap all over our garage and present the prospect of tracking stool into our home. So, I purchased a pair of inexpensive live traps from the local Home Depot, (which I amusingly refer to as "Home Despot" in normal conversation).
These traps are simple in operation: they are small, long boxes just large enough for the animal to crawl in and take bait from the rear of the box. They have a small fulcrum point in the middle, so that they tip slightly when the animal enters the box, and the tipping causes a door to close and lock behind it.
Mrs. Supreme Aglet set one of the traps in the garage Sunday evening. Just a few minutes later, I went into the garage on another pretext and immediately noticed that the trap was gone.
It was a Tom and Jerry moment. As I was staring at the empty spot where the trap once was, my mind replayed a scene of the cat Tom putting out a hair-trigger mouse trap for Jerry with a big piece of cheese on the trigger, only to watch Jerry drag the trap by its cheese into his little hole in the wall without incident, and then happily consume the cheese right off the trap, bite by bite. Of course, Tom reaches in the mouse hole to grab the trap and the slightest touch results in snapping the trap on his fingers. Poor Tom.
I called for Mrs. Supreme Aglet to join me in the garage. "Uh, didn't you just place a trap right there?", I asked.
She acknowledged that she had done so, and I know I saw it there after it was set. Perplexed, we both began to wade through our vehicles, bicycles, and other garage fodder in search of the trap.
"Shhh", Mrs. Supreme Aglet said, as she held up her hand to indicate that we should freeze and listen.
I heard it too: something was scurrying among something else somewhere in our immediate vicinity. It sounded like little tiny claws scratching against the metal on a 1960's-era automobile, and since the only such object in our immediate vicinity was my 1964 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, it became the logical conclusion that one or more rats was somewhere in the vehicle's front end. It sounded specifically like it was in the hood.
"In the hood?", I hear many of you ask.
Perhaps I should point out something before we proceed: automobiles were once very substantial things. A hood wasn't just a flat sheet of metal, it was a 3-dimensional structure. The underside of the hood on this particular vehicle reveals openings into long and narrow support structures--just large enough, apparently, for a rodent to crawl into and make a home if s/he were so inclined. (Note the use of both genders even when referring to rodents, indicating the progressive individual that The Supreme Aglet truly is.)
Upon opening the hood, I heard the little booger slide down the inside of the hood.
Unfortunately, it was fairly late in the evening and neither Mrs. Supreme Aglet nor I were inclined to develop some ingenious way of locating the specific area of the rat or rats and removing him or her, so we left it/them there, hopefully to eventually venture out for food and find the larger trap we had purchased from Home Despot.
Before leaving the garage, I closed the hood, which was likely very unpleasant for little rat ears. Closing the hood on that vehicle produces a cacophony of thunder that is unpleasant even for human ears, prompting Mother Goose to change her famous rhyme to "Three Deaf Mice", ("Three Deaf Rats", whatever) and the world of the Supreme Aglet is once again in perfect balance.
No, really; there are rats in my hood.
I spent last weekend cleaning rat poop out of our sizable garage, coming to the obvious conclusion that a family of rats is living somewhere in the garage area. I was unable to determine precisely where they made their home, unfortunately, so I decided to purchase some rat termination equipment.
Mrs. Supreme Aglet insisted that we purchase the sort of traps which preserve the productive lives of rodents who crap all over our garage and present the prospect of tracking stool into our home. So, I purchased a pair of inexpensive live traps from the local Home Depot, (which I amusingly refer to as "Home Despot" in normal conversation).
These traps are simple in operation: they are small, long boxes just large enough for the animal to crawl in and take bait from the rear of the box. They have a small fulcrum point in the middle, so that they tip slightly when the animal enters the box, and the tipping causes a door to close and lock behind it.
Mrs. Supreme Aglet set one of the traps in the garage Sunday evening. Just a few minutes later, I went into the garage on another pretext and immediately noticed that the trap was gone.
It was a Tom and Jerry moment. As I was staring at the empty spot where the trap once was, my mind replayed a scene of the cat Tom putting out a hair-trigger mouse trap for Jerry with a big piece of cheese on the trigger, only to watch Jerry drag the trap by its cheese into his little hole in the wall without incident, and then happily consume the cheese right off the trap, bite by bite. Of course, Tom reaches in the mouse hole to grab the trap and the slightest touch results in snapping the trap on his fingers. Poor Tom.
I called for Mrs. Supreme Aglet to join me in the garage. "Uh, didn't you just place a trap right there?", I asked.
She acknowledged that she had done so, and I know I saw it there after it was set. Perplexed, we both began to wade through our vehicles, bicycles, and other garage fodder in search of the trap.
"Shhh", Mrs. Supreme Aglet said, as she held up her hand to indicate that we should freeze and listen.
I heard it too: something was scurrying among something else somewhere in our immediate vicinity. It sounded like little tiny claws scratching against the metal on a 1960's-era automobile, and since the only such object in our immediate vicinity was my 1964 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, it became the logical conclusion that one or more rats was somewhere in the vehicle's front end. It sounded specifically like it was in the hood.
"In the hood?", I hear many of you ask.
Perhaps I should point out something before we proceed: automobiles were once very substantial things. A hood wasn't just a flat sheet of metal, it was a 3-dimensional structure. The underside of the hood on this particular vehicle reveals openings into long and narrow support structures--just large enough, apparently, for a rodent to crawl into and make a home if s/he were so inclined. (Note the use of both genders even when referring to rodents, indicating the progressive individual that The Supreme Aglet truly is.)
Upon opening the hood, I heard the little booger slide down the inside of the hood.
Unfortunately, it was fairly late in the evening and neither Mrs. Supreme Aglet nor I were inclined to develop some ingenious way of locating the specific area of the rat or rats and removing him or her, so we left it/them there, hopefully to eventually venture out for food and find the larger trap we had purchased from Home Despot.
Before leaving the garage, I closed the hood, which was likely very unpleasant for little rat ears. Closing the hood on that vehicle produces a cacophony of thunder that is unpleasant even for human ears, prompting Mother Goose to change her famous rhyme to "Three Deaf Mice", ("Three Deaf Rats", whatever) and the world of the Supreme Aglet is once again in perfect balance.
posted by The Supreme Aglet at 7:32 AM
<< Home