Bartles and Jaymes were our sons.

They were brothers…..dog brothers.

We saw them in a pet-boutique window one day as we were walking by.

We weren’t shopping for pets but there they were, two adorable little puppies.  

One had a very sad, scared look on his face and he was holding on to his brothers back with his two front paws.

I felt so bad for them.

I thought we should go inside and pretend like we were interested and ask to hold them.

Maybe a few minutes of loving arms would do magic for them.

It worked, the magic happened…..for us!

Shortly after entering that shop, we left with two Schnauzer puppies.

NOT a purchase we’d intended on making that day but, there they were, snuggled in my lap and we were headed home. 

I have 13 years of fun, wonderful memories of those two amazing boys that I’d love to share with you but this little tail is about RATS.

……….

Lobo and I were still in the work force, meaning we weren’t home 5 days a week but all of a sudden we had two furry kids to think about.

We made a little apartment for them in the garage with dog beds, toys, water dish, dog kibbles and a doggie door so they could go from the garage to the back yard whenever they chose.  

We didn’t want them locked up in the house for 8 to 10 hours a day. 

……….

It happened in our garage….. that’s where our washer and dryer were.

I began smelling a foul odor every time I bent down into the washing machine tub to scoop out the wet clothes for the dryer.

I have an overactive sniffer and Lobo’s is way under so I didn’t say anything for quite a while.

I kept hoping it would just go away. 

But it was always there, every time I pulled out the clothes.

I did a little detective work on my own, but couldn’t figure out the smell.

The clothes didn’t stink but something sure did.

Eventually I mentioned it to Lobo.  

He stuck his head way down in the machine and as I figured, he smelled….. NOTHING!

I tried to ignore it but after a short time, it went from an odor, to a smell to a STINK and something needed to be done.  

And so, one warm Saturday morning, I convinced Lobo to pull the washer away from the wall to see what we could see.

What we saw was a mess of what looked like shredded newspaper and dog kibbles.  

LOTS of dog kibbles and ewww the smell.

Bad sniffer or not, Lobo saw the kibbles and knew that Bartie & Jimmy hadn’t put them there.

They were packed all around the outside of the drum of the washing machine and the shredded paper? 

SERIOUS STINK!

We looked at each other…..what the heck?

We had to think about it for a minute and then it hit us…..mice!

We had mice!

And they had a good thing going in our garage…..water, food and a warm nest.

We put on gloves, took a deep breath and cleaned the mess then headed to the store to buy a mouse trap.

Coincidentally when we got to the rodent/pest department, a man was standing there with a few traps in his hands.

 A mouse-trap conversation ensued between the three of us.

He educated us on Granite Bay and the rodent population. 

……….

Granite Bay is where we had recently bought our house.

The realtors called it “Prestigious Granite Bay.” 

It was a lovely area with lots of open land.

We were close enough to walk to Folsom Lake, a popular summer spot to picnic, swim and boat.

There was a big empty field smack behind our house and the realtor who sold us the house in the “prestigious” area…..the one who forgot to tell us about the rodents, well she told us no one was ever gonna build behind us so we’d have all that for privacy.

The mouse-trap guy told us that if we lived in Granite Bay, we were gonna have to deal with rodents but not mice…..RATS!

In my mind, a mouse was a small, helpless, almost cute little furry thing. 

A rat on the other hand was big, with an evil-looking pointed nose, a long tail and it wants to bite you.

He handed us a huge rat trap and suggested we use peanut butter as bait because the Granite Bay rodents were very sophisticated and knew how to remove food without setting off the trap.

We were already completely disgusted (one of us was kinda horrified) and then his grand finale was that rats don’t come alone.  

There’s never just one…..they come in groups, families, tribes.

……….

We made our purchase and the two city-folk that we were, headed home with a big, ugly rat-trap ready to face the enemy.

……….

It took a few times to set it.

A few times of barely missing a peanut-buttered finger tip.

But we did it.

Well, not WE…..Lobo did it.  

I was the supervisor.

He placed it carefully behind the washing machine.

The next morning there it was, a peanut-butter lovin’, pointy faced, long tailed rodent. 

Dead in the trap.

Now what?

We hadn’t thought that far.

We….I mean HE certainly wasn’t gonna TOUCH it.

My supervision skills kicked in.

Tongs…..we needed tongs.

The only ones we had were for salad in our silverware drawer.

They were gonna have to take one for the team.

So, my brave rat-man put on gloves, I handed him his “tool” and he picked up the varmint. 

The rat, the trap and the tongs went into a plastic bag with a double-tied knot and into the big trash can outside. 

Success.

Well, not really.

Remembering what the rat-trap guy in the store had told us…..we knew we had to expect more.

We went back to the store, bought another disgusting trap, peanut-buttered it up and set it behind the washer.

Next morning? 

Nothing!

Maybe the rat-trap guy had been wrong.

Maybe the one we caught was a loner rat, the family black-sheep rat.

We decided to give it a week and keep checking.

The second peanut-butter trap remained untouched all week.

………

Saturday rolled around again and since there hadn’t been any invaders for a week, we felt pretty sure that the rat chapter of our life was over.

I wanted to move the washer and clean the area where it sat and I also wanted to clean the underside of it. 

I suggested/requested we pull it out on to the driveway, into the sunshine and take the hose to it.    

Thinking safety first, I thought we needed some kind of protection.

I mean carrying a stick makes us all feel braver against the unknown, right?

I fought the thought but…..what if by some goof-ball chance there were more hiding in there?

What would we do?

How would we catch rats on the run?

A stick definitely would make us feel better! 

I looked around surveying the contents of Lobo’s neurotically neat garage. 

And there it was, the Hornet Spray…..my weapon.  

We kept a can in our garage, not for hornets but for a few rattle-snake encounters we’d had. 

The spray stuns them just long enough to do whatever it is that needs to be done. 

It sprays in a long stream, enabling the sprayer-person to stand back a safe distance, hit the target and BINGO!  

It kinda stifles and stuns for a moment.

I’m sorry if this sounds mean or even wrong to some.  

We love animals, all kinds.

We even love mice.

I mean, WHO doesn’t love Mickey, Minnie or Mighty?  Right?

I have a “mouse” that sits on my desk, right next to my right hand. 

I don’t think I could get through even one day without that mouse but rats and reptiles?

Well, they’re just not our thing.

I know some of my friends on Facebook have them as pets and that’s awesome……….. FOR THEM.

My grandson told me once a long time ago that I needed to make friends with lizards.

To this day, I have no lizard friends and…..I’m good with that.  

OK…..I was armed with my can of courage…..next I needed to find something for my rat-huntin’ partner.

I thought he needed a big stick.

I couldn’t find one but I found something almost as good …..a toilet plunger!

……….

Armed with our weapons, we pulled the washing machine out on to the driveway and laid it on its side.

Then a series of events kicked off…..all at the very exact same moment.   

Our roommate daughter, Melissa pulled up…..

She parked and began walking up the driveway…..

She saw the washer lying on its side…..

  She looked at us,  “what are you two doing?”

Just as I was explaining, Lobo turned on the hose and pointed it inside the machine with a full force of water…..

All hell broke loose.

Missy let out a scream loud enough to be heard all the way to Sacramento. She ran, no she leaped like a giant into the garage.

She grabbed a pair of boots hanging on the wall as she passed, then like a cat, one jump, straight-up, landed her high-up on Lobo’s work bench.  

She put the boots on, picked up a hammer, tucked her legs up as close to her body as she could get them and watched the action from her safe spot.

I think my scream could be heard all the way to San Francisco, maybe Las Angeles, maybe even Detroit!

It was a soaking wet rat and it was running out from the washer to our grass, diagonally across our yard and toward our neighbor’s yard!!!!!

We couldn’t just let a rat run on the loose, NOT in prestigious Granite Bay for crap sake!

Lobo was standing kinda stunned, plunger in hand.

I yelled,  “Lobo, DO SOMETHING”.

He began chasing it.  

He did. 

There he was, my high-school football hero running after a rat with a toilet plunger in hand. 

I ran behind him, took aim and sprayed.

BINGO!

It stopped, dazed in the middle of the yard.

Again I yelled, “Lobo, do something.”

And he did!

He plopped that plunger right over that dazed rat.

NOW WHAT?

Well, the ending was near but I’m not gonna tell you.

You figure it out.

What would YOU do if you had a rat on your front yard grass trapped under a plunger sprayed with Hornet Spray?

……….

One more thing.

For the rest of our years in that house, we never had anymore rent-free-rats hangin’ around and trust me…..we held detailed inspections and often. 

And, when we sold that house, we sold it just as we bought it….. “prestigious” Granite Bay with no mention of rats.