eeek, a rat!!

By: Pat Steele

This article has nothing to do with surfing, the ocean or the beach. If you have a weak stomach or if you’re opposed to violence and guns, please move on to the next article. Okay, you’ve been warned.

In the ’70s our house in Solana Beach was on a half-acre with a dirt driveway and flower fields across the street. Even though we were close to the beach it felt like we were in the country. We had a detached garage that our two dogs slept in.

One of my chores was doing the laundry. Yeah, that’s right tough guy, laundry. Don’t stereotype chores as feminine or masculine. If you want a successful marriage, pick your battles. Anyway, the washer and dryer were out in the garage and sitting on top of the washer was a huge rat. The rat defiantly stared at me with my bucket of dirty clothes. Maybe the rat figured any girly man washing clothes was not to be feared. I watched in amazement as the rat sauntered over to a hole in the drywall and disappeared.

I remembered my neighbor telling me rats lived in the ivy growing on the fence between our houses. He said they eat the snails. Apparently they had decided the dry dog food in the garage tasted a lot better.

We had two dogs. One was a female boxer, named Lady, who given to us by a Marine family that had been transferred back East. We also had a male Doberman named Spyder. Lady was the smartest dog I’ve ever owned and Spyder was the dumbest. The dogs had been chewing and barking at an old dresser that we stored some clothes in. I finally realized they were barking at the rats. When I opened the top drawer, baby rats popped out of it like popcorn.

I have to admit, all their scurrying around at my feet gave me the willys. Rats have a bad reputation, maybe it’s that ugly lizard like tail or maybe it’s the fact they almost wiped out mankind with the bubonic plague. Whatever. I declared war.

That night I armed six rat traps with peanut butter as bait. The next morning all six rat traps had dead adult rats. I reloaded and the next morning had six more, and on the third morning, I got the same result. Apparently I had weeded out the dumb rats because on the fourth morning the peanut butter was gone, but there were no rats.

I realized I needed to eliminate the rat’s hiding places. I hired my teenage nephew, who was dripping with machismo, to take down all the drywall. All day long at work I was chuckling, just thinking of his machoness jumping around all those rats. I was disappointed to hear he didn’t find one rat, just a lot of nests. He also had left a strip of drywall up above the garage door.

The next morning I went out to remove the last piece of drywall dressed in my summer work clothes; trunks, flops and a tank top. I had a feeling there had to be rats hiding behind that last piece of drywall since they weren’t anywhere else.

I positioned the dogs inside the garage facing the last piece of drywall. With a pick I hooked the drywall, tore it off and ran outside. My peripheral vision saw rats tumbling to the ground. About 10 yards from the garage, I stopped and looked back. The boxer, Lady, was in hot pursuit of a large adult rat. Lady chased the rat right towards me. The rat fearing for its life scrambled up the only limb in the near vicinity, my bare leg. When it got to my thigh I let out a primal yell and swatted it off. One more second and it would have made it inside my trunks. Lady pounced and crunched it.

My 6 year old son appeared at the back door, “Dad, did you hear a scream?”

I quickly evaluated the situation. I consider parents to be important role models to their children. Did I want my son at an influential age to know that his father screams when he is under duress? That would be a no. “I didn’t hear anything.” I lied. He went back to his cartoons.

Lady was catching rats and then dropping them at my feet. I was terminating them with the top of the pick handle. The worthless Doberman was following Lady around like this was some stupid game. Lady was awesome. She helped me wipe out five more rodents.

We moved the food and water out of the garage but occasionally we would see a rat in there. One afternoon Betty and I spotted one on the ceiling joist and it ran and hid in the corner. It was still in plain sight. I told Betty to go and get the .22-caliber pistol we own.

Betty’s a Texan and grew up around firearms. Her Dad, an avid hunter, has probably killed and eaten more game than Mcdonald’s has sold burgers.

I kept my eye on the rat. when I heard her come back with the gun I reached back for her to hand it to me. When she didn’t, I turned around to see her in a firing position. She squeezed off a round. I looked for the rat. It was gone. “What are you doing? You missed him!” I said.

She calmly declared, “I got him.” Sure enough the rat was laying on the ground a bullet hole under its shoulder, right through the heart. I’m married to freaking Annie Oakley.

The rat war was mostly over. Lady would dig in the ivy to get at them, but they weren’t showing up in the garage. Then one night I was woken up by an unusual sound. When I focused there was a rat on my window screen searching for a way in. The screen was about three feet from face. When I sat up, the rat dropped to the ground and disappeared.

The next night I armed myself with a pellet gun. When the rat showed up I carefully and slowly raised the pellet gun and fired. Unfortunately, the gun was so weak the pellets bounced off the screen and hit me in the face. I was getting sick of this Willard wannabe, so I brought out the trusty .22.

The next night I had a bead on him when Betty stopped me, “you’ll put a hole in our neighbor’s house!” I whistled for the dogs. When they came running the rat climbed to the top of the window, he was trapped. I ran outside and with a full moon lighting the sky, I could see him crouched on the window trim. Again I had him in my sights, when Betty stopped me, “You’ll put a hole in the house! Let Lady get him.”

I positioned the dogs and hit the rat with an orange from our orange tree. The rat, in an incredible feat of athleticism, jumped off the window, over the dogs and scrambled for the safety of the ivy. Lady somehow heard the rat hit the ground and bolted after him. In the darkness I heard Lady crash into the ivy.

Willard had escaped. I was bummed. I should have put a hole in the house. When Lady came back from the ivy, she proudly had the dead rat in her mouth. She had hit a homerun-bottom-of-the-ninth-with-two-out!

God I loved that dog.

The next day we hired someone to remove the ivy and we never had rats again. Lady will always remain in the Steele family Hall of Fame.