Die Rat! Die!

After three weeks in a row of sweeping out rat crap, I'm done with the humane approach of trying to capture the rodent alive and send it on its merry way to the neighbor's house. Today, a rat will die.

The final straw occurred after spending an entire Sunday trying to draw the rat into a cardboard box, only to watch my plan crumble at the very moment of triumph.

The key to capturing the booger was to get it back into its home from its daily mission of searching for food and dumping stool all over my garage. As you might recall, it had made its home in the hood of my car, so once I could get the rat back in it, I could lift the hood and effectively trap it inside.

I succeeded in that much, having drawn the rat back into the hood and trapping it within. The only way out of the hood was through the end of it facing the front of the car; and with the hood open, there was no way the rat would attempt to crawl out and fall to its death or risk severe injury. Rats are very risk-averse, which is why you don't see them bungee-jumping.

Using the ingenuity that I possess in spades, I grabbed a cardboard box full of car wash towels and removed its contents. I then ran inside to grab a dollup of peanut butter, which I placed on one of the box flaps. I placed the box in the car's engine compartment just under the opening in the hood representing the rat's only escape route. I lowered the hood on top of the box and raised the peanut-buttered flap so that it looked like a surface area upon which the rat could safely walk onto.

I fastened a bent paper clip from the corner of the flap to a small opening in the hood, which kept the flap up close to the exit hole, but held it loosely enough so that any weight placed upon it would cause the flap to collapse.

I went back into the house for a beverage and to watch SpongeBob. Afterward, I thought I'd go check on my trap to see if had ceased being rat-challenged. Upon stepping into the garage, I discovered that the trap was in progress at that very moment.

Yes, the timing was perfect! I stood there and watched the rat crawl out of the hood and onto the box flap with the peanut butter on it. He stopped to glare at me from across the garage midway through his journey out of the hole, as if to say, "hey, I found some peanut butter and I'm gonna eat it; what are you gonna do 'bout it?"

Finally, the full weight of the animal was on the flap--BAMMO! It fell right into the box. BWA-HA-HA-HAA!

It was a moment of severe excitement for me. I had lived the whole day--if not the previous three weeks--for that very moment, and reveled in my achievement. I ran back in the house and called for Mrs. Supreme Aglet, who promptly met me back in the garage to observe our prisoner in its menagerie.

Of course, the combination of curiosity and the perceived award of being able to see the animal up close and appreciate how cute and cuddly it was bound to be drove Mrs. Supreme Aglet straight to the box in which the rat was captured. With a warm smile on her face, she peered inside to look at the little darling. Unfortunately, it was bigger than she imagined, and she reflexively pushed the box away as she backed off from it.

This caused the box to tumble part-way into an open area of the engine compartment, leaving it tipped just enough to allow the rat to make it's way out. I ran to right the box, but the rat jumped out just as I grabbed the box and untilted it. The little creep jumped back into the engine compartment, once again becoming impossible to find.

After a day and a half of obsessively chasing the little snot, not to mention three wasted weekends clearing out our sizable garage and sweeping out rat poop, it was time to exercise my advantage of being at the top of the food chain and use my superior intellect to defeat the rodent. I'm all for giving an animal a sporting chance, but this one really ticked me off. The sentence: death by rat poison.

So, I have done it. For her punishment in aiding and abetting the escape of my prize, Mrs. Supreme Aglet was sentenced to the nearest Home Depot to fetch some rat poison. She kindly completed this task, I have since placed two boxes of the delicious pellets of death in key areas of the garage where the little crapper likes to concentrate his or her stool, (note the use of both genders when referring to a rodent who produces large quantities of stool, indicating the progressive individual that The Supreme Aglet truly is).

Feast, my pretty, for tomorrow you die, and the world of the Supreme Aglet is once again in perfect balance.