Rat in the Laundry Room

Alright.  I promised you all the story of The Rat in our house.  First off, I am just going to say, "YUCK!" and get that over with.

So here's what happened.  A couple of weeks ago, the city shut the water off to work on the pipes.  Our best guess is that is when this discussing thing was able to make it's way up the pipes and into our laundry room.  Well, several days later (that part makes me shutter...I have no idea how long it was in the laundry room before we discovered it!) I was working on something in the living, came into the kitchen and saw something streak across the floor back towards the laundry room, which Gracias a Dios has a door! 

I shut that door as fast as I could, because whatever it was, was big and brown and had a long tail.  I have seen enough mice in my day to know it was NOT just a mouse.  This thing was like the size of a squirrel!  No joke.  And I have had run ins with squirrels before. 

Noah was gone at the time, so doing the rational thing, I called him in panic.  We had been having some issues with cockroaches as well (that's a whole other story), and I said, "so we have bigger problems than cockroachs dear..."yeah, much bigger!

When he got home, we discovered that, yes indeed, this was a rat and it was trapped (again, Gracias a Dios!) in the laundry room.  And now what?  Noah went and found some sticky traps big enough (ha!) to catch a rat.  We put one in there, and waited.  After the boys went to bed we heard some scratching and realized it was stuck!  Noah decided that instead of letting it struggle all night, it would be more human to drowned it.  So, he filled a bucket and we thought we were done.  And then the water worked against us!  It got the glue off the rat and the thing escaped!

So, since the sticky traps came in packs of two, Noah put the other one out and we went to bed hopeful that in the morning we would be able to be done with this thing.  Uh hu.

Morning dawned and all we saw was a sticky trap with a bunch of fur on it.  So gross!  The stupid thing had gotten caught, and managed to work it's way off the trap!  Still at large in the laundry room!  Escape numero dos!

At this point Noah made the decision to go ahead and get some rat poison.  We didn't want to go that way because of the boys, but felt that since it was in such a enclosed area, it would be ok.  Well, The Rat did eat the poison, but it took a while to take effect.  At one point, I think one of the boys looked through the window (they would periodically run over and look and ask where The Rat was, like it was a zoo or something) and said they saw the yucky thing sitting on top of the washing machine!  Noah took a trash can and put it over it, to try and flip it over and then be able to drown it.  At this point, the poison had dulled the stupid things reflexes.  But Noah wasn't fast enough in flipping the trash can over again and it escaped!! Again.  Yeah, if you are keeping track, that is the third time!

So at this point, it's Sunday night.  We had been battling this thing for 2 days now, not being able to do laundry.  Everyone was on edge.  Any time someone accidentally brushed up against one of us, we would holler.  Elliot, who usually is fine with bugs, saw a spider in the corner while he was putting his shoes on and let out a scream like I haven't heard from him!  Poor kid!

Monday came, and off we went to school, hopeful that when we got home that afternoon that stupid vermin would be dead.  After school Noah ventured into the laundry room and looked high and low for The Rat.  He couldn't find it.  Anywhere!  We thought we had blocked off all the areas it could possibly get out.  And yet, it was no where.  Which creeped me right out.  I wanted that thing dead, in the laundry room, so I knew it was dead.

Well, by mid afternoon, I needed to do laundry.  We were running out of underwear.  So, sorta on a whim, I asked Noah to look in the washer just to make sure it wasn't in there...and guess what?

Yep, there it was!  Curled up next to some rags.  Yick!  Noah decided it wasn't getting away this time.  He put the washer onto the spin cycle, to get the thing good and dizzy, and then, yeah, you know where this is going, he washed it on the heavy cycle!  My husband drowned a rat in the washing machine!  It was nice and clean when it came out and got thrown in the field down the street.

And just so you know, I ran a bleach load three or four times after that just to make sure it was nice and clean.  Blahhhh!