it is that time of year where i rearrange my small living room to accommodate a tree. i actually really enjoy having a tree in my house. they smell good. when they are all lit up i can leave the rest of the lights off and enjoy the ambiance. i admire the ornaments i have and reminisce. yes i love having a Christmas tree.
we were in the second week of december and i still hadn't gotten a tree. i couldn't even seem to find a day on my calendar that had an extra hour to go search for one. last year the kids and i cut our tree down, and we had planned on doing that again, but single motherhood plus busy schedules complicated our plans.
this year, i agreed to host Christmas morning, which is my sis, my mom the kids and myself. since mom wasn't going to host, she decided to not even decorate. i've got to admit that i am kind of bummed my mom isn't decorating, there is something about going to your parents house and seeing all the holiday stuff from your childhood that i just love. this turn of events did present an artificial tree not in use, my moms.
the tree has been living in mom's barn for the last year, but i didn't think anything of it there is tons of storage in the barn. mom helps me load the tree into the back of my car and off we go. the kids help drag this enormous monstrosity into our living room. around the same time my ex shows up to get the kids, he generously asks if i want help. i tell him no but he starts anyway. i open the box and gasp! a critter has been living in the tree box. my ex picks up the tree and droppings start falling out of the tree. "Get it out! Get it out!" i shriek at him. he takes it outside and shakes it free of rodent presents. i tell him, "i don't want that box here." he puts in the back of his truck and takes it with him.
i call my mom to tell her all about our adventure with the tree. she gets a good giggle out of it. i think this is where my story ends. i am SO wrong.
the next morning i go to warm up my car. when i open my door there are rodent prezzies on the floor mat of my front seat. WTF?!? i look at the passenger side...there is more there! i look in the back seat..yep you guessed it more prezzies! OH MY WORD, IT IS IN MY CAR!! now some of you may have closed the door and your life would have ceased. maybe you would have called an exterminator? maybe you would have sent your vehicle to a detail shop and got a rental? well seeing as how i am a po divoced woman none of these are really options for me. so i went back inside grabbed my giant, from costco, container of clorox wipes and wiped down every hard surface, shook out the rugs and called it good for now. "come on kids, we're late for school."
i dropped the kids off at school swearing them to secrecy about our stow away. for some reason the idea of having a rodent, at this point i am not sure if it a rat or a mouse, but i am leaning towards rat because his prezzies are rather large, was ultra embarrassing. for those of you who know where i live, it is kind of ghetto, especially if you knew where i used to live. i drove to work peering over my shoulder expecting to see my guest with a giant grin on his face and a speech bubble saying, "ooh a car ride. where are we going?"
after several days of emptying my car, endless vacuuming, constant disinfecting, and arming the front and back with poison, i was still finding prezzies in the morning. my guest joined our family on a tuesday afternoon. i death trapped my car with poison on thursday afternoon. saturday morning i am still finding prezzies. on saturday afternoon a guy friend came over to set snap traps. my thought was my guest has been eating poison for a couple of days, yet i still hadn't seen him. i didn't want him to die wherever he had decided to take residence in my car.
sunday morning. i am prepared for a critter to be dead in the trap. i am actually hoping that he is dead in the trap. what i found i was not prepared for. i peered in the front passenger seat, this has been where he has been most active, and there he was. OH MY WORD!! he is huge. i open the door and he turns his head to look at me. as you can guess i am now screaming. i shut the door and go back inside.
what happens next may horrify some of you. i came back to the car armed with latex gloves (thanks to my thoughtful trap setter friend), a plastic grocery bag and my phone so i can take a picture of the culprit. it looks up at me again while i take his picture, but does not scurry away. he is very sick. who wouldn't be after 3 days of eating poison? i don my gloves and carefully place the bag over him. i hesitate on what to do next. since he is still alive i don't want to touch him, he might bite and then i will have rabies or some other horrible rodent disease that might cause me to grow extreme amounts of fur and a tail. for some reason there is an old checkbook in the passenger door, i grab it and fling him into the bag, dropping the checkbook in too. i tie the bag up and throw him away.
i didn't kill him first. i just couldn't bring myself to whack him on something. i chose instead death by suffocation. in fact the bag was breathing while i was carrying it to the garbage can. i understand this is a horrible way to die and i do feel bad, but i am not violent and whacking him seemed so harsh. this was really i could manage.
so my rat tale ends. i have not found any other prezzies in my car. i still don't know where it was nesting, but i am really hoping i don't have a troop of baby rats suddenly leaving me prezzies. i am still cleaning my car every time i get in it. i am so grossed out! my rat mobile is still armed with poison just in case.
the tree is pretty and i am grateful to have it on loan for the holidays. however, i am thinking i would've rather had the spiders that come with a live tree over the rat that came with the artificial tree.
1 comment:
Now we r the sisterhood of the traveling rats......lol. Miss u mamma!!!!
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