A Rodent Car Surprise.

So about a week and a half ago, I started noticing that things in the car were looking a little, well chewed. It didn't seem to be a big thing. A corner of a bag here, an old ice cream wrapper there, nothing major. I had assumed that a mouse had gotten in somehow, and had feasted for a while before returning to his home.

For those of you that have ever had car rodents, you can laugh at me now.

Unfortunately, we didn't discover that we had a real problem until we hopped in the car to go to some yard sales and I heard something moving. In the dash. Right above my feet. Which meant that the mouse was in the dash directly in front of my feet. Scott was all “open the glove compartment SAVE THE REGISTRATION!”

And I'm all like “I AM NOT OPENING THIS WHILE I AM STRAPPED INTO THE CAR!”

So he pulled over and we armed ourselves with whatever we could find in the trunk. So I had a chisel and Scott had a miniature crowbar that was only about six inches long. I'm not sure what the owners of the house whose driveway we were at the end of thought, watching us approach the glove box like wary Indians, armed with what looked like half a wood carving set, but I am sure it was nothing positive. Which probably explains why we are known as those people. Then I make Scott rip open the glove compartment and out falls a giant nest made out of plastic bags, tissues, bottle wrappers, and cables.

I think I may have freaked out a bit.

Of course not enough to make me skip going to any yard sales. I could miss priceless treasures. Like the three dollar red antique suitcase I bought. Couldn't pass that up. Isn't even haunted. So that's a win in my book.

Anyway, so we stop by a few stores and buy some glue traps for the mouse. Of course we had to work the next day, and of course it was in the city. Not only did this mean that we had to wake up at but ass stupid early, but that we really had to get our extra passenger out of there. Although on the plus side, if he did jump out at me on the highway I probably would not have had to buy any caffeine that morning.

So we get home, bait the traps with some cinnamon raisin bagel (it was what he was used to) and go about our day. Well, right before I am thinking of getting ready for bed, I remember I haven't locked up the sheds so I head on up to the driveway. As I am locking up I here a rhythmic thumping. Puzzled I walk around until I realize it's coming from the car. Where I walk over and see ALL FOUR glue traps , strung together with a Gatorade bottle wrapper are being beaten against the underside of the dash, right under the glove box.

Carefully I reached down, grabbed the last trap and pulled. They came free and I saw that the last one was covered with a layer of gray brown fur. Then I hear something. Something roughly the size of, oh I dunno, a refrigerator or maybe a small tractor clawing it's way up into the dash. And that's about the time I said “oh shit.”

I walk back in the house and tell Scott that we are going to need a bigger boat. No wait, that was Jaws. I tell Scott that motherfucker is a rat. What followed was a hopeless montage of me looking everywhere for my rat traps. See they were all being stored in the while metal shed. The same white metal shed that had been crushed by Super storm Sandy. The same metal shed that we had taken everything out of and emergency dumped into any other structure with enough room to store that shit. Which meant that my chances of finding a rat trap were about as good as my chances of winning the lottery.

And I don't even play the lottery.

So I came back to the house and asked what the hell we were going to do. It was already an hour past when I was supposed to sleep, there was a rat the size of Volkswagen Bug in my car, and we all we had to kill it were some ridiculously undersized mouse glue traps.

It was then that Scott had an idea. He ran out of the room and reappeared a moment later holding some antique squirrel traps that he had bought from some toothless dude on the side of the road for like twenty bucks.

MOTHERFUCKING BINGO PEOPLE!

So we smeared a thin layer of peanut butter on the triggers, carried all three of them up to the car, and carefully, -hey-don't-even-breath-carefully, we set them in the car.

Then we waited.

So in the morning I was in the house, smearing cream cheese over a bagel and thinking that working for money is bullshit, when Scott remembers that we filled the car with spring traps and goes up to check them.

Which is really, probably the weirdest trap line ever.

After a few moments he returns. I ask if we got that sonuvabitch. Scott says “I am going to need the gun.”

I was like “HOW BIG IS THIS RAT!?”

So then I had to follow him up to the car where I found one very alive, very stuck, very large and very pissed off rat. I will spare you dear readers, the unpleasant details of how he was caught and how I removed him and the trap from the car, but will resume when he had been successfully lowered onto the gravel driveway.

Scott checked to make sure the gun was loaded with the right shot and fired. Then before I could move the flashlight away he fired again, looked up at me in the cold white beam of the light, and said only two words.

Double. Tap.

Which is probably why we are known as those people.