jay | morning dispatch

So to speak... after finding my comforter in my garage bedroom fouled again last week, despite the ultrasonic device chirping two feet away, I'd decided I had to get rid of the rat by whatever means.

This was the animal that had figured out how to defeat glue traps by dusting its paws, then leaning over to eat the bait (leaving little dusty pawprints behind). Poisoned bait was a very last resort, given that it would crawl away somewhere inconvenient.

So over the weekend I bought old-fashioned snap traps... I demonstrated them to the kids, and bent one of our spoons in a test. The first night I baited, but did not set... the peanut butter was gone yesterday morning. So last night I re-baited, and set the traps... successfully. Sort of. In past episodes at another house, the traps had broken the rats' necks and killed them quickly. This time... sigh. Broken snout and face, missing eye, lots of blood, and the rat had still managed to pull free and was feebly moving. Only thing to do was to finish it off quickly, I felt sorry for it even as much as I wanted it gone from my living space. Ow.

It was *large*, about ten inches long, brown with red and grey highlights, a female with bare exposed teats in rows. I'm wondering whether the bare spots indicate that she had been (or was?) nursing a litter, even worse. Or whether this means there's likely a male rat somewhere around...