My Rodent Problems

I was never the animal person of my family that was my brother’s doing. We used to have a menagerie of pets while growing up from lost puppies, three generations of cats, a turtle the size of a large boulder to insane number of fish. I was never actively involved in their care, I was the indifferent one. The only time I took care of a pet would be feeding the fish on time. That would be the sum total of my experience with animals. I am scared shitless when it comes to dogs; the people who live downstairs in my apartment have this monster of a dog which gives me the creeps whenever I see it. Every time I am climbing the steps, I dread hearing the earth shaking because of the monstrous feet moving about the rickety steps. I am almost always literally run out to the street and wait till that hell hound is out of sight. That’s the sum of all the experiences with animals.

So, when this rat started making our kitchen its home, I took the easy way out. It’s a large house (for Mumbai standards) and two people and a rat can definitely co-exist (thanks to all the cute movies they made about rats; why the fuck would somebody sentimentalize about this I still don’t get it!). So, I used to leave food around for it so that it doesn’t have to scurry around.  I have always wanted a pet and this seems to be the easiest way to have one; I thought I would call him Stuart and we would live happily ever after. Little did I know that Stuart had an evil plan, the rat bastard!

I went home for a week and came back to find the house filled with rats! They were everywhere! I opened my shoe rack and off they ran out after ruining my Aldo favorite gladiators (which was the most expensive pair of shoes of the lot!). I was benevolent till then, but nobody touches my shoes and gets away with it!

So like any other consultant, I did my research for a whole day, called up a few contacts; found out the best way to get rid of your rat problem is to use rat poison. Next step was to actually buying the stuff which apparently is sold in medical stores (how does that connection work anyway??). So, I searched and searched till I found the stuff and spread it all around my house. It took a whole week for the frigging poison to work by then we got the house cleaning crew (who actually looked like elves scurrying around the place) but the house was back in order. No more rats! I was so happy I actually went out and celebrated the occasion.

But sadly the happiness dint last long, it took them a week to fucking procreate and they were back at it. And this time they ate my medicines (these are the stuff poor meself bought from a dermatologist to get fair and lovely; translates to my mom sicced my aunts on me and I had to spend 1k to buy this shit because my matrimonial ad cannot say wheatish obviously)! Why is it that with all the shit happening around me the rats only attacks my stuff and leaves my roommate alone? Repeated the spread-poison-around-your-house-and-wait step again.

Fast forward one more week to today and the mother rat is finally dead but it had it revenge like Abu Nazir, its death was not a lost cause. It went died in the attic where I cant even begin to search because my owner has left all their shit up there. It looks like an Amazonian rainforest full of crap nobody will ever use. Anyways the shit finally hit the fan literally today because apparently the smell doesn’t start for a few days after the demise of the said rat. By the 4^th day it is very discernable. So I got up on the attic with a make-shift face mask dunked in perfume and latex gloves (my room-mates, I have absolutely no idea what she does with them). So, there I was up on the table with K and my maid cheering for me and good lord I almost puked my guts out (this would be the first time without alcohol!), but I couldn’t do it. So, I got my maid’s daughter to get it out of the house and gave her one of my perfume bottles as a gift, ironic it can be but I couldn’t thank her enough for getting the beast out of there.

So, the rat did provide me with a very good distraction and an alternate career choice of an exterminator, so lesson learnt in the end. It was definitely the year of the rat.

P.S If you were thinking where my roommate was in between all this chaos, she was happily sitting in her room inhaling the dead rat smell the whole fucking day. She only came out of her room once every thing was clear only to complain the stench of the perfume (which yours truly has sprayed across the house to hide the smell of dying rodents)