RATS 101

When I say rats, I don't mean rats, as in rats, or darn, or heck. I mean rats as in RODENTS.

I know when it gets cooler outside, rodents begin looking for a nice warm place to make their nests and settle in for a spell. From the clues I have gathered IN MY GARAGE it seems that an eighty pound rat has decided to call the Welcome Wagon and join the neighborhood book club.

Many of my friends have been so willing to share their experiences with me and being a novice I have listened intently and followed their directions on how to eradicate them. Here's what I know: don't use poison because they'll die in between the walls and the smell will be so bad that you'll have to move out of the house, use steel wool to stuff where you think they might be coming in, use peanut butter, creamy, not chunky, and place the traps close to the wall because they run next to the wall.

To begin, I thought the neatest option would be to go with the glue traps. EVERYONE says to use peanut butter. We bought two glue traps and I put a dollop of peanut butter on each one. Here is the first one. As you can clearly see, it hadn't been touched.

This was placed in the garage on the same day. Looked to me like I had been outsmarted by a rat. I think those are his little footprints under and to the right of the where the peanut butter was.

It soon became obvious to me that the glue traps weren't getting the job done so I decided to get the real traps, the wooden ones that will break their necks. I'm getting angry. So last week I went to Lowe's and bought two large traps. The woman in line behind me seemed concerned. When you buy these things, people look at you in horror. Some just shake their heads and tell you their stories. That is where I get lots of my information like, about whether to use smooth or chunky peanut butter, among other things. My salesman at Lowe's told me that he used Slimjims. I don't know where to buy Slimjims.

I thought this was going to be a simple project, setting the traps. HA! My husband and I tried everyway possible to set them and we couldn't figure it out. I even went on the website and watched a video. Still didn't get it. We blamed it on the traps. Obviously they were defective. I wasn't going to let this little bump in the road stop me. The next day I went to The Home Depot to check out their traps. I found them and even went to a sales associate and asked her to show me how to set the trap. She very calmly showed me and I was convinced that I got it. As soon as I got home, Tom and I started to fiddle with them and again no luck. After working with them for at least thirty minutes, Tom mentioned to me with clinched teeth that between us we had four degrees and we were pathetic. I agreed. Stupid was more like it. At last he got it. The secret is tension. We put the peanut butter on them and off we marched to the garage to catch this varmit.

Every day I ask Tom to check the garage to see if we had success. I just can't look. It absolutely grosses me out. A couple of days passed and this is what he found.

Outsmarted again. This is not over.