It's come to my attention that I never did complete the saga of RatBastard that I started some 11 months ago. Let me rectify that now...
If you've not read the first two instalments, please do. This will make bugger all sense otherwise. RatBastard, RatBastard II.
I had almost finished writing up yesterday’s RatBastard events, in a slightly more subdued manner than the first one – the hairy little shite scared my puppy :( – when I noticed a hissing noise coming from downstairs. It sounded like the hiss of a toilet cistern filling up but I was the only person in the house, so something was amiss.
Yesterday, I had borrowed an electric rat trap from a mate. I’d placed it next to the dishwasher leg under the sink smack in the middle of the rat run where the rodent couldn’t proceed without entering. This was the reason it went totally apeshit at 2 am last night, scaring the contents of Juno’s stomach out onto the carpet.
The new trap takes four C cells and looks like a tunnel with one end blocked. On the floor of the trap are three metal plates that run from one side to the other, a thin one, a fat one and another thin one at the far end. Where the bait goes.
Switching it on causes a capacitor to charge over the course of ten seconds or so. Touching the near or far plate in conjunction with the middle plate discharges that capacitor in one heart stopping electrical jolt. Trust me on this. I still have no feeling in my index finger.
No moving parts, nothing to go wrong, fucking deadly.
Unless you’re Albert sodding Ratstein in which case you just chew through the cold feed to the dishwasher and short the bastarding thing out.
Honestly, unfuckingbelievable. I had to call the local plumber to get someone out to fix it. Unfortunately, he couldn’t send anyone until the next day so we were all in for a shower-less night with buckets of water from the neighbour’s outside tap in every toilet.
My son disappeared up the stairs in a hurry. “Douglas, if you’re going to the bathroom, don’t flush unless it’s a shit!”
“Why? What’ll happen if I flush?”
“It’ll use all the water and then we can’t flush it later.”
“Ah. OK.”
Two minutes later. Two fucking minutes, I hear the upstairs toilet flush (it has a pipe chase in the living room. The rat uses it as an express elevator to the study upstairs).
“Doug!”
“What?”
“Did you just flush that toilet?”
“It’s just automatic, Dad. You finish, you flush!”
Hence the buckets.
That pissed me off.
It annoyed me so much that I cut up a sheet of plywood and made a blind for in-between the breakfast bar and the wall so I could completely block up the kitchen. Ratman reckons they can leap a metre vertically so it may be less effective than I hoped but the nine inch kitchen knife at my side would do for close quarters. Although I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a real good chance that would end up in me and not the rat if it came down to it.
Then I ripped the valance off, stuffed a neck-snapper in its run loaded with half eaten Galaxy and stood on high alert clutching the pistol, ammo scattered on the breakfast bar.
The kitchen was now a killing field.
Nothing.
All frigging night.
2:22 am and we were woken by loud plastic chewing noises. So loud that I thought it came from my son’s room next door. I bolted out of bed, grabbed the gun (it never leaves my side now) and checked his room.
Nothing obvious.
I turned on the light.
Still nothing. All was quiet. Did it hear me coming?
Samantha’s room is closed, so it shouldn’t be in there. Ditto with the spare room and the bathroom.
I moved into the study like John McLean, sans the forward roll (I’m getting on a bit), only just resisting the urge to shout, “Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker!”
Pistol whipping about like an enraged cat’s tail, I upended the sofa and the two recliners.
Nothing.
Rolling about on the floor like a moderately plump David Starsky, I checked under all the tables.
Fuck all.
I buggered off down the stairs and waited in the kitchen for the little bastard for an hour and a half.
Zip. Nada. Zero.
I was late getting up that morning and when I eventually made my way downstairs there was an Easter egg on the living room table. Actually, it would be fairer to say that there was half an Easter egg on the table. The remainder of the chocolate had teeth marks in it.
It sat in its moulded plastic hemispheres and mocked me.
The plastic sections had teeth marks too. In fact there was a great big rat-sized fucking hole in them.
I’ve not had a proper night’s sleep in a week, and in my less than peak condition at two am or whatever fucking time it was, I checked UNDER all the tables but I didn’t think to check ON them. Particularly the re-tasked dining room table that Doug and I use for our computers.
Upon which had stood the very Easter egg I was looking at.
The rat was in the Easter egg when I was in the room doing my action hero impressions.
Let that sink in.
It was in the fucking Easter egg, on the table, quiet as a…
The little bastard!
The sneaky, conniving, sleekit, devious little shit. I've got to the point that my respect for this sodding rodent has led me to rename it from RatBastard to fucking Houdini.
This is what I’m dealing with for fuck’s sake!
At this rate, given its massive chocolate consumption, type 2 diabetes is going to kill this fucking thing before I do!
Next instalment here: RatBastard IV (This link will go live tomorrow).