Last Saturday, my husband Mark announced, “I’m going out to pick up a rat and some salad ingredients.”
I imagined a rat laying on top of a bed of salad greens. It wasn’t very appetizing.
He explained that he was going to Scales and Tails to buy a small rat. Our bull snake, which we have renamed Houdini, had escaped from his cage and had crawled into a hole in the dry wall in the downstairs bathroom. Mark’s idea was to lure Houdini out with the rat. Mark was also planning to buy salad ingredients, but not at Scales and Tails.
Mark had several ideas for luring the snake out. Some ideas were better than others.
The first idea was to stuff the rat in the dry wall. The theory was that Houdini would eat the rat and eventually emerge for another tasty rat treat. We both agreed that was not a good idea. The rat would be running around in the dry wall until the snake ate it.
The second idea was for Mark to hold the rat next to the dry wall to lure the snake out. This was also considered to be a very bad idea. I imagined the rat squirming out of Mark’s hands and running around the house. Our cat Garfield would chase the rat all over the house. It just sounded like a cartoon plot. When I mentioned this idea to one of my coworkers, he said that we could dangle the mouse from a fishing pole. This sounded like a tactic used by Sylvester the Cat to lure Tweety Bird from his cage.
The third idea was to put the rat into a plastic cage, which would be placed next to the dry wall hole. This seemed like the sanest option. So far, the snake has not been lured out of the dry wall. We must have not gotten a very odoriferous rat, since the cat has not noticed the mouse. In the meantime, we have a rat who lives in the downstairs bathroom. I have a feeling that he will eventually become a pet.
