rats in the basement

Typically, I don't let the bug man in my house. No pun intended, but he bugs me. As much because I never know when he's coming, so my house is always some sort of wreck as because the idea of noxious chemicals floating up from the baseboards to strangle me as I sleep freaks me out. But a couple years ago, when the bug man showed up I was forced to invite him in. I wanted him to tell me that I didn't have a rat.

I wanted him to tell to me in that condescending way that plumbers and electricians and yes, bug men have that I was just paranoid crazy. I wanted him to give me the same look that the electrician gave me when he explained, "Lady, that burning smell is just some charred cheese on the bottom of your oven. It wouldn't kill you to clean your appliances once a decade, but it won't kill you if you don't either."

I wanted something like that from the bug man. But one does not always get what one wants. No, the bug man took one look at what I had identified as rat droppings, picked one up, rolled it around in his fingers, smelled it with the delicacy of the finest sommelier and confirmed, "Yep. You gots a rat. You want I should kill it?"

Kill it? Kill it? Oh dear. I hadn't thought that far ahead. I mean, I wanted it gone, but. . . .

"I don't. . . I mean, can't you just. . . it's coming in. . . in the house. . . but I don't want it dead. . . not necessarily. . . ."

You see, while it may be some sort of foul vermin in my eyes, I couldn't help thinking that the rat had a mother (just like I do) and that mother in her own way loved the rat. And it probably had a little rat family and times were tough and the weather was turning and it probably just needed a warm place to camp for a bit and it didn't really do anything bad. And for this, it should die?

". . . I just don't want it in my house," I stuttered to a finish.

"So whats you want me to do?" he demanded, standing there in my four-by-four foot kitchen rolling the rat turd round and round in his fingers.

What did I want him to do? What did I want him to do? I wanted him to make the rat go away. I wanted him to maybe post tiny "Please do not enter" signs where the rat was coming in. Perhaps place little round-a-bouts or mesh grates in front of the opening to my home. What I didn't want him to do was make me responsible for its death! My shirt isn't the one with the word "exterminator" written on it.

Thank you.

Very much.

So why was the bug man standing in my kitchen and placing the life of this poor rat in my hands? That was his job. This should be clear. (DUDE! Read. Your. Shirt.) But apparently it wasn't.

"Well, um. . . what are my options?" I hedged, wishing with all of my being that he would stop toying with the rat poo already.

"Options? Well, I can puts out the traps."

"What kind of traps?" I wanted to know.

"What kind of. . . ?" Now I got "the look." "Rat traps," he said slowly, "The kinds that kills the rats?"

"Yeah, but I mean. . . like the kind that clang down on them and break their backs or those sticky pad thingies I heard about on NPR?"

And now "the look" with the rolling of the eyes and the sucking of the teeth and the woosh of an exhale that means the other person is silently praying for patience and simultaneously cursing the day you were born an idiot-child whose parents were too soft-hearted to leave you in the fields for the wolves.

"Lady, you gots a rat. You wants me to kill it, I will. You wants to live with it, that?s okay by me, too."

Oh God. Live with it?!

"No, no, no . . . I don't want to live with it." Big, deep breath. "Put out the traps."

So he did. And for several weeks I'd check the traps two or three times a day, every time SO AFRAID that the rat would actually be there, dead. Or worse, not dead. And just alive enough to express to me its agony of pain and rat recrimination.

But all the traps seemed to collect was dust and a few unfortunate bugs. And still I checked everyday and every night laid in bed, eyes wide open, jumping at every little squeak and clatter. But nothing.

Nothing but my dread.

And then a couple weeks later as I was leaving for work, my landlady stopped me. "So I hear you had rats in your basement," she says, sticking her thumbs in her belt loops.

"Rat," I said. "Singular. The bug man said there was only one. And it came in the house."

"Oh," she said, tilting her head to the side and squinting one eye, "you don't know?"

"What don't I know," I asked, picturing the dug-out crawl space with just enough head room for a midget with scoliosis and a host of unresolved childhood fears. Less a true basement, more a cave, with one corner large enough to hold the washer and dryer. I pictured it crawling with beady-eyed rat hoards and shivered.

"You had some rats in your basement," she explained carefully

"Oh no. Really?"

"Human rats," she clarified.

"What?"

"Four of 'em. Homeless guys come in to get out of the cold."

"WHAT?!" I said louder.

"Don't worry. They're gone now. And I put a lock on the door so they can't get in no more, but I just thought you should know."

"How long were they there?!" Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. . . .

"Far as we can tell, 'bout a week."

"I WAS DOWN THERE THIS WEEK!" OHMYGOD!OHMYGOD!OHMYGOD!

"Yeah, well. Chances are they were more scared of you then you woulda been of them."

"Not if I'd known they were there! I would have been plenty scared!"

"Well, I'm real sorry about it. But here's the key, so you can get in if you need to."

"Thanks." A lot, I muttered under my breath, blessing every saint I knew that the laundromat was just around the corner. Oh. My. God.

The next day I told my neighbor Adam about my erstwhile roommates. "I knew it," he said. "I knew someone was in your basement! Elka (his Siberian huskie) was howling and barking at the door all week. I should have listened to her. She always knows. Oh, God. I'm sorry, Jill. If I'd just listened to her I could have done something about it. I'm so sorry. I really should have paid better attention."

Adam's a sweet guy, but sometimes he takes things a little too personally.

"It's okay. It's not like you could have really done anything," I said.

"I could have gone in with my gun and told them to leave or I'd shoot them like tin cans off a fence post," he answered, hand going unconsciously to the bulge on his hip. Really, he's very sweet.

"I didn't want them dead, Adam," I said. "I just wanted them gone."

And thankfully, they were. And without bloodshed.

I never saw any of my rats again. But sometimes I think about them and hope they've found their ways home. Home to their mothers and the families that love them. Even rats need a place to call home, right? But as open-minded as I'd like to think I am, I'd just as soon prefer they didn't choose mine. Because apparently, I'm just not do or die enough to deal.