Adam Naming the Creatures, I Am Not

It seem as if, with my previous post about the unexpected life forms found in the office bathroom, I have unleashed a veritable flood of memories. Perhaps this is because I don't like animals - in terrible fact, I somewhat dislike them, even puppies and kittens if God can forgive such a person - and every time I have an animal encounter, I store the episode away in some mental filing cabinet of horror. Like a squirrel with chestnuts. Rotten chestnuts.

I am reminded, by the roach incident, of the time that I found mice living beneath the sink of the house I had just moved into. I moved into my new house mere days before I was scheduled for a vacation to the US, and in the excitement of leaving I dumped all my things in the cabinet under the kitchen sink and left. Upon my return, I opened the cabinet only to be assailed by a scent so rank - so musty and mildew-y - that at first I thought perhaps I'd discovered the door into the kingdom of Narnia, or some other place inhabited by furry creatures.

The reality was nothing so fantastical. I had been invaded. By mice. The area immediately under the sink was filled with little pellet-size droppings, many of them fresh. In addition, the pipe that connected the sink's drain to the sewage system had come undone, resulting in some horrific kind of soup. I immediately shut the door and backed away, trying not to hyperventilate.

It ocurred to me that I might be mistaken. I ran to the computer. Thank God, my neighbor's unsecured Internet was working - and Googled 'Rat droppings' and then 'mouse droppings.' There was even a third option, suggested by Professor Google. Lizards.

Please God, let it be lizards, I thought, conveniently forgetting the question of what exactly a lizard would be doing in the dank region underneath my sink, where neither flies nor mosquitoes plied.

Alas, the Internet revealed the awful truth. It was undeniable. Those were the droppings of rats. And worse, they were fresh. I chewed on my nail. I called home. I called my aunt. I even called the realtor who had rented me the house.

"Why did you bring me to a house with rats in it!" I shouted at him, like a deranged person. He did the telephonic equivalent of shrugging.

"Not my problem," he said. And indeed, it wasn't. He'd already cashed his check.

It soon became clear that the rats were, in fact, no one's problem but mine. I opened the door again, just to confirm the awful reality, and was further horribly shocked to see a red-eyed rat perched on the remains of the pipe, chewing its cud, or whatever the hell it is that rats do when they're sitting around waiting to horrify decent people. It was like a haunted house, only peopled by creatures, not ghosts.

I extracted my things from under the sink. There were teeth marks on the back of my black leather slingbacks, and mouse droppings in my sheets. My insides felt like they were made of jelly. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up somewhere else, which in fact was exactly what I tried to do. It did not work. A further ocular check the next morning revealed that the rats were still entrenched.

I called my landlords. They were suitably chagrined and invited me down to give me ratkiller.

"Don't eat this," my landlady helpfully said, as she shook a waxy green pellet into my hand. She felt compelled to repeat that warning as I made my way up the stairs to my apartment. "They usually crawl away to die," she said, a comment that raised a whole new and horrifying spectre in front of my mind's eye. Usually??

I wrenched open the cabinet door, holding my nose, and dropped the pellet next to the pipe.

After installing the pellet, I went to sleep again, hoping against hope. In the morning, the pellet had been chewed on. I felt a savage satisfaction. I imagined leagues of rats crawling away somewhere to die. I had never taken such pleasure in death before. It made me feel suddenly, horribly powerful. I was, albeit through an intermediary, killing rats. I felt the way Dick Cheney must have felt the moment before he pulled that fateful trigger - I felt like Alexander.

A few hours later, my landlord arrived with the plumber, who inserted the pipe into a metal sleeve, to prevent any further incidents. I had horrible visions of dead rats floating in the pipe, but I pushed them away. Over time, the smell went down. The rats stopped coming. But I continued to think about them, even long after they had gone.