Wildlife at home

Towards the end of my time at UT in Austin, I lived with a roommate named Claude – probably the best of all the roommates of my young life.

One evening I came home and noticed that the bathroom door was partially open, and there were wood chips scattered around. Being, as I was during some of my college career, somewhat spacey, I thought, “What was Claude doing?”

First, a little backstory.

Earlier that semester, I had noticed some of what looked like little tiny bite marks on the plastic bag of the loaf of bread we kept on top of the ‘fridge. Thinking we just had some aggressive cockroaches, I went and got a Tupperware-like container made for a loaf of bread. Before long, though, I noticed bite marks on that, and thought, “Wow! We’ve got some truly badass cockroaches.”

Soon enough another event changed the picture when, upon entering the kitchen one night, I saw a rat’s ass disappearing between the counter and the oven. At last we knew our opponent!

First response was to strap a scuba knife to a 2x4 to keep in the kitchen for whomever spied the enemy to go at it. That was the first response because it involved no cash outlay, and was thoroughly ineffectual. And the bandit’s scritch-scritch-scritch just taunted us.

We had to up our game.

We went traditional, getting spring loaded rat traps baited with cheese, and put them in the attic whence came the scratching. Upon checking the traps, we realized we were up against a master – the traps were sprung with not a morsel of cheese left. Absent resolution, escalation looms.

The decision was made to initiate chemical warfare, and we soon put out poison bait trays. He found ‘em, he liked ‘em, he ate ‘em right up! One, two, three bait trays!

And then it started, BA-Dum-Ba-dum-ba-dum-dum-ba-Dum-BA-DUM! Back and forth, bounding through the attic of the house. Space Cadets Council of War concluded the poison he’d eaten had made him Psycho Rat, and nobody wanted to go up in the attic to confront him.

Then one evening I came home and noticed that the bathroom door was partially open, and there were wood chips scattered around. I thought, “What was Claude doing?”

Who knows? I went to bed, and the next morning got up and went into the bathroom. No sooner than I closed the door, there was a BANG! We had a window over the bathtub, and we had a squirrel who’d been hurling himself towards the sunlight revealed. He looked a bit dingy by now, but still, thoughts of doing battle with the wild kingdom while buck naked were anxiety producing. So I exited the bathroom.

What to do?

I called Wildlife and Fisheries, and they suggested building a runway from the bathroom door to the outside. Which I did using every couch cushion, pillow, box, etc. in the place. And then, with the help of a broom, I escorted the squirrel from the bathroom  to the front door. We were both glad.

We concluded he’d somehow gotten into the attic and couldn’t find a way out, and then finally fell from the attic into the unfinished clothes hamper in the bathroom.

So life was back to as normal as it got, then.

Until, about a week later, I went into the bathroom in the morning and there was a bit of a rustle coming from the hamper. It had one of those pull-down hatches for dropping clothes in, and when I opened that, a bird flew out! The bird had less of an idea about where to go next than the squirrel had.

Well, I already knew Wildlife and Fisheries’ number, so I sought counsel once again. They advised to get a towel and throw it over the bird, and then release it outside. Easier said than done, but when the bird finally ran out of options in a closet, the deed was done.

EPILOGUE

Shortly thereafter, I graduated and began a job back in Houston. For the first couple of months, I stayed at my mother’s house. About the second week, I went into the bathroom to get ready for work, and there was commotion in the hamper. As I opened the clothes hatch, out flew a bird. Well, this was a bathroom, there were towels right there, so Fwap! And Out! No sweat!