Pasquali Must Die

I live in an older house. And older houses have….character. Aside from character, this house came with a resident rodent. I wrote about him a couple of years ago. Back then, I called him Monkey Rat and for a while, I thought he was gone or dead. I haven’t thought about him for years, it seems.

You would think that having a house full of dogs and cats, that a rat might not be so compelled to come hang out, but this is not the first time I’ve been wrong about a topic.

With that being said, banana rat aka Monkey rat is back. I cannot be sure if it is the same rat. I don’t actually know how long the lifespan of a rat is. I just googled it, it’s less than two years, so I guess it is definitely a different rat. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it is a direct descendent of Monkey rat.

My guy has named the rat Pasquali. Here’s a short list of things Pasquali has done over the last two weeks:

• eaten the cat treats off the counter
• eaten the dog treats off the counter
• taken the peanut butter off the counter and dragged the container under the sink, chewed a huge hole in the bottom of the plastic container and eaten the rest of the peanut butter.
• eaten a hole in the buns on the microwave
• eaten half of my banana from the banana rack on the counter

Basically Pasquali has an eating disorder.

The other morning, I was standing at the dryer that is also in the kitchen, and I felt a little hand tapping me on the foot and then Pasquali scurried across both my feet across the kitchen and under the cabinet. It didn’t freak me out too bad because I had my slippers on. It would have probably been a different story if I had been barefoot.

What did freak me out was the size of this rat. It was at least 9″ long and that’s not including the tail.

But even at this point, I was not ready to murder him. We had set up a humane trap, but when we did that, we thought Pasquali was a mouse. After seeing him, I know why we didn’t catch him. He probably couldn’t even fit one of his fat arms in that trap.

We are probably going to have to get raccoon trap to get him or maybe a bear trap.

Three days ago, I went to the store and bought a few things, bread included. I left it on the counter. Today, I went to make breakfast and couldn’t find the bread. I looked in the cabinet. I looked in the refrigerator, which is where we are currently keeping anything edible. I even looked in the freezer thinking maybe I had messed up and put it there.

But, no. The bread is gone. The whole UNOPENED loaf.

It was then that we decided that Pasquali must die.

The only problem with that, is that Pasquali is smarter than us. We’ve set the neckbreaker traps and the traps get sprung, but no dead rat. That’s why I’m convinced Pasquali is a female. If she was a male, she’d probably already be dead.

I’m secretly hoping the death traps don’t work so we can go get the humane kind. If we get a trap that’s big enough for a loaf of bread, I’m sure we will catch her then.

Will update….