Raterrecoon (a.k.a., Pestducken)

I had this idea a couple of Thanksgivings ago when there was a rat in me kitchen. It first made its home in between the dishwasher and the kitchen sink and Chris was the first to hear it (he said it was quite loud and he thought maybe there was a human intruder in the house). It then secretly migrated to the kitchen stove, where it proceeded to pee upon and rip up the insulation, and generally fuck things up. I didn't realize it had made a home in the stove as well as the sink area for awhile, and continued cooking on the stove well after I'd killed and disposed of the rat. I kept wondering why I smelt rat pee when I cooked (I thought it might be my cooking, actually) and only realized what was going on Thanksgiving morning as I preheated the oven, smelt rat pee yet again, and started poking around and saw the torn up insulation. Ugh! I believe that was the same Thanksgiving we all got what I thought at the time was the Norwalk Virus, but now that I read up on the details I'm not so sure -- I promise there is no way I got stools on the food. Anyway, we were all really sick -- pukey sick -- in the day's after I served dinner.

Killing the rat was a source of some anxiety for me -- I am a serious pussy when it comes to killing things and I did, after all, once have a pet rat named Ratty. (Actually, at first Ratty's name was Claudia and she belonged to my friend Tim Moore. My mom changed her name to Ratty after we all went to Alaska and left Claudia/Ratty behind. Tim was planning to smuggle her on the plane in his jacket at first but then thought better of it -- man, those were the days. Can you imagine trying to smuggle a rat aboard a plane these days? My mom also had a cat named Catty. Ratty had a ton of personality, and after I came back from Alaska she became my pet for awhile. We used to play this game called "Ratapult" with her where she would be on the bed and we'd kind of toss her around with our feet under the covers. She loved it!) At first I considered using a live trap, but then, I thought, where would I release it? where would a Norwegean rat be welcome? Not even in Norway, I think, and certainly not in any part of North Portland. I also thought about using glue traps, but then I read someone's story about setting out a glue trap only to find little gluey rat footprints all over their carpet in the morning. While I was considering the catch-live-and-then-kill method I asked Denise for a good method of killing the rat once I caught it and she suggested putting it in a pillow case and then spinning the case around and around as fast as I could and then thumping it hard on concrete. A regular rat trap started to look more and more attractive.

I called Multnomah County Vector Control (this is one of those government services that even the most die-hard libertarian must admit is a great return on the tax dollar) and they told me how to set a rat trap safely -- safely for me, that is. (Poisons were out of the question because Lita was still in the picture -- just too old a feeble to kill a rat -- and because Vector Control warned me the rat might eat some poison and go somewhere inaccessible but smellable to die.) [I just looked around for a website which demonstrated the technique they recommended and didn't find one so maybe I'll have to add some pictures here.] Anyway, setting a rat trap is really easy if you use the foot control technique. You just put on some good boots or shoes and hold the trap open with your feet while you set the trip wire and then release the trap slowly with your feet while your little fingers are well out of the way. Words fail me here -- I'll take some pictures. Anyway, it really relieves the reasonable fear that you will break your fingers in setting it. And then I tried setting it with different things -- cheese was a no-go -- it just ignored it -- so were hot dogs, which it took and ate without setting off the trap. Same with little piles of peanut butter. Finally I took some peanut butter and smeared it all over some gauze which I then attached to the trip wire. This worked because the rat had to gnaw at it, I guess, which set off the trip wire.

I found it with its little neck broken one morning. Actually, the neck wasn't near little enough for my taste -- it was a lot bigger than Ratty's, that's for sure -- well, before the tumor took hold of Ratty. Did you know that rats are particularly vulnerable to cancer? I'm not sure if that's why they use them in so many studies, but it make sense. We didn't subject Ratty to anything more toxic than the rest of us experienced, but nonetheless poor little Ratty got a huge growth on her neck which grew and grew until my mother finally had to put her down. She's as much of a softie as me, so she actually took Ratty into the vet to have them do it. My sister's father Javier, who grew up on a farm in rural Mexico, was incredulous that Betsy would actually spend good money to kill a rat that was well within striking distance. He offered to do it for her, but she took it to the vet, anway. Javier and Denise should really meet sometime, if they haven't already.

So anyway, back to that sad, rat-pissy Thanksgiving morning. While I was thinking about Vector Control and all the animals that plague us -- rats, squirrels, possums, racoons, mice, lice, etc. -- I thought: what if you could combine them all into one roastable treat, like a turducken? A pestducken! Or a raterrelcoon? A pocoonice? A mouse inside rat inside a squirrel inside a possum -- inside a racoon. After all, if you can stuff a camel, why not a racoon?

My unwillingness to actually eat something like this points out my discomfort with myself as a hypocritical meat eater. I feel bad that I don't like killing things and yet love eating them. I'm still working on that. But I stopped myself from buying turkey dogs last night as Safeway with thoughts of rats as well as turkeys.