Monday, September 20, 2010

To Kill A Rat

it's 9:30 a.m. on a hot and sunny monday norning in the holy city of zefat. i have just disposed of a dead rat and administered first aid to my dog cloey, who was bitten by the rat. i have also just cleaned up dozens of blood stains in the house.

i am taking a coffee break. i just ate two ice cream sandwiches and am thinking about having another. why is my life centered around animals and pests? my schedule for the day was to decorate the sukkah and possibly see about finding new scach. the baby went over to his other grandmother. the girls , his aunts, are all home from school and want him there. at first i felt cheated, but then i thought that i could spend the morning doing fun things. catching and disposing of a dead rat is not a fun thing to do.

i can still recall the first time that my friend shoshana and i caught our first rat in a trap. the rat was quite agitated and kept moving around in the trap. we were also quite nervous and kept jumping every time the trap did. we finally worked up enough courage to drown the rat by immersing the trap in a bucket of water. however, we had no clue as to how to dispose of it once it was dead. we stood outside in the old city of zefat and waited for passerbys to ask for help. a man and his young son soon came by and we discreetly, told them of our predicament. the young boy most gleefully, volunteered to dispose of the dead rat for us. he came back quite happily, a moment later, with the empty trap and told us to call him if we had any more dead rats.

i came back from the denal surgeon in a funk yesterday. the doctor suggested that i undo the temporary cap and have the tooth pulled. it is the only molar left. i have been chewing food with it for the past few years. the price for the 3 implants will totally deplete my savings. just discussing the surgical procedure freaked me out of my mind. i think that i might just go for an inexpensive prosthetic. i still have to go next week and have three teeth pulled. is there any wonder why i've eaten the entire carton of ice cream sandwiches.

as soon as zvi came home last night, he started to assemble our sukkah. he was most impatient and not pleasant to be around. i ended up missing my aroebics class. the baby did not want to stay outside with me. he wanted his mom. i'm sure the clan would be glad to hear this.

i went downstairs to fetch the sukkah material and i noticed fresh rat droppings. i then saw that the hose of the washing machine was no longer attached to the pipe. it was most odd! i opened the washing machine and found droppings inside. all the traps were closed so i knew that we had a large rat in our household. cloey was acting very agitated upstairs in the kids' apartment so i guessed that the rat was probably there. gal didn't take me very seriously, so i went downstairs to watch t.v. she brought sahar downstairs for a little while and we watched our favorite kid's show together until he fell asleep.

zvi woke me up at 8:00 a.m. to let me know he saw the rat. i immediately, ran upstairs with cloey, our 'ratter' dog. zvi apparently, was having his morning sandwhich, when the rat ran between his legs. the three of us went into rat pursuit. we moved around all of the furniture and emptied all of the clothing from the built in closet. at one point, the rat was hiding in a very narrow tray under the refrigerator. his tail was about a foot long. our only chance of catching him was to corner him in the bathroom. we finally got our chance. while zvi and i were armed with brooms and mops, cloey caught him in her mouth. she was bitten in the process. zvi finished the rat off while i caught cloey and applied a kotex pad to her bleeding face. thank goodness gal finally got her period!

zvi called work to say that he'd be in late. i gave cloey some rescue to calm her down. she was hyper ventilating. zvi kept on yelling at me to take the dog to the vet. i was still in my house robe, holding my bleeding dog. i wasn't going to rush out and jump into a cab in my pajamas. i managed to calm her down and i applied some arnica oil to her face. the bleeding stopped. i poured a few drops of lavender oil onto her face to disinfect the wound. i poured her some milk and she drank it all down. i was no longer very concerned. i still had to go back upstairs and dispose of the dead rat and clean up all the blood stains.

zvi showered downstairs and went to work, leaving me to clean up the bathroom. he called to let me know that the dog, probably, needed to be placed in quarentine for rabies. i didn't have the vet's new phone number so i called a friend at work. she won't be back until 1:00 p.m. the city's vet clinic is closed today. i called the town's vet and he said that i had done well. he said to bring her in tomorrow for antibiotics, if there appears to be any infection.

so here i am, alone and totally spent. i still need to decorate the succah and finish attaching the material. i have to rearrange all the furniture upstairs and put back all of the clothes from the built in closet, where the rat took up residence. and i still have to bail out the water zvi left in my bathroom after his shower.

2 comments:

  1. your experiences have my heart pounding-I can only imagine how yours is doing!
    ants,fleas,rat-I hope nothing next!
    maybe have your mezuzos checked.

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  2. I'm missing your blog. I hope your tooth is feeling better. How is Cloey doing after the rat-fight?

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