Ratsky

Are you smarter than a rat?

In today’s America, should a rat take up residence in your house, you are in danger of being drummed out of The Middle Class.  People hate and fear rats. Having one in your house sends shudders up many a spine.  Which is a little ironic, because humans and rats have a lot in common.  Both are social and highly exploratory, able to invade and exploit a wide range of habitats.  Both quickly learn what’s good and bad in the new habitat and share that knowledge with compatriots.  Both have leaders and followers. Both can eat an amazing range of food, including some things for which the term “food” is a stretch.  With so much in common it’s not a surprise that rats like people, and probably also not surprising that a rat came to share our house with us.  So, when Ratsky moved in with us, it felt almost inevitable. 

It took a while to realize that we had another mammalian guest, for we were active when the light was on, and Ratsky when the light was off.  Our paths failed to cross for some time.  What finally revealed Ratsky’s presence was that large parts of the lemons and limes we kept on the kitchen counter had been eaten, peel and all.  The only person I ever knew who could eat a ripe lemon without even squinting was my major professor, and I was pretty sure he hadn’t left California and moved in with us without letting us know.

A pile of lemons and limes like the ones that revealed Ratsky’s presence.

But being a scientist, I needed direct, empirical evidence, not the indirect circumstantial stuff we had so far.  I mean, who knows what other things chow down on ripe, juicy lemons, peel and all (come to think of it, even my major professor didn’t eat the peel).  The next indirect evidence came in the form of droppings.  The internet said it was “rat droppings” and added that roof rats can be distinguished from brown rats by the size of their poop.  Our rat’s more delicate poop clearly indicated that it was of the penthouse class, not the cellar class. 

I still wanted direct, visual evidence, so I set up my camera on a tripod, first in the hall upstairs, later in the kitchen when it became apparent that Ratsky had grown fond of the kitchen.  The camera snapped a picture every thirty seconds until it ran out of battery after about 5 hours.  Scrolling through the images revealed several pictures of our furtive friend, Ratsky, initially hugging the perimeter of the kitchen, but later roaming freely across the floor and counters as though he felt really at home (which I guess he really did). 

A still from a series of images showing Ratsky’s presence in our kitchen.

Having shown that Ratsky was real and seemed to feel part of the household, Vicki began encouraging me to “get rid of that rat.”  However, neither she nor I can even bring ourselves to squash a cockroach, so live-trapping and “relocation” seemed like the only options.  I borrowed two different styles of live traps from my vertebrate biology friends, set them up with yummy bait in the kitchen, and recorded the expected excitement on my timed-release camera.  The video below shows that Ratsky clearly smelled a rat.  He may have drooled at the sight and smell of the food, but there was no way he was going to walk into that trap, no sir!

The internet (the source of all practical knowledge nowadays) suggested different styles of live traps, and I built several.  One was made from PVC pipe with a transparent, one-way door, guaranteed to work (it didn’t).  A couple were variations on bucket traps with the bait placed just beyond the balance point of a very tippy lid (Ratsky sneered at this one). 

I gave Ratsky choices about which kind of trap to bumble into, the HavaHart trap on the counter or the bucket trap on the chair. He chose neither.

Then there were the variations on a deadfall, one using a large plastic box to trap the rat, rather than a big log to squash it.  Ratsky again smelled a rat, and didn’t even nibble on the very delicate, hand-made, carefully tested, proven-to-work trigger.  Designed for a grizzly, it didn’t work on a rat.

The cumulative score so far was Ratsky 100, Walter 0.  As all this was going on, we were busily looking for holes in our house through which a rat might have found entry. Every gap, however insignificant, was plugged with steel wool, as advised by rat specialists (these are people, not rats).  But Ratsky was getting full of himself, and one morning Vicki awoke to find that, while she slept, Ratsky had eaten a large part of her favorite yellow, plastic purse that she had left on the floor next to the bed. And then, as Pride Cometh Before the Fall, in broad daylight, Ratsky and two buddies had pranced across our bedroom while Vicki was watching TV.  They might as well have thumbed their noses at Vicki or given her a raspberry. 

War was declared. 

Eventually, Ratsky made a fatal error by appearing from a small corner closet in our bedroom.  The closet was crammed with quilts and assorted parts for our wood-burning stove.  Peering into this closet, it was Walter that smelled a rat.  In a box containing an extra section of stovepipe, there was a cozy nest with three rat pups.  Aha! Ratsky was actually Ratska, and she was, at that moment, elsewhere!  A perfect time to set a trap, for I knew for certain she would return to tend to her pups.  I went downstairs to prepare the trap, but when I came back, the pups were gone.  In less than ten minutes, she had transported three pups, one at a time, to parts unknown, perhaps into the storage area in the eves, and from there, perhaps into the front porch overhang, which was also the site of the last bit of rotten wood through which she might have gained entry in the first place. 

We never saw Ratska, her buddies, or her pups again. I repaired the possible entry over the front porch, along with other little gaps that seemed too small even for a rat. Perhaps she evacuated her pups from the house because it had become too dangerous, by what route I don’t know, but what is certain is that she had disappeared from our lives. There are plenty of places around the outside of our house where Ratska might have found comfort--- the woodpile, the garage, the lumber storage shed, and perhaps others that I, not being a rat, might not recognize as congenial. Perhaps our house had been downgraded as less congenial in rat society, and the message had spread to other rats.

So, in the end, who was smarter? I don’t think it was me.  I think what finally made me victorious was simple persistence.  Smart vs. persistent. But still, that is a life lesson too isn’t?