One rat has been slain in Jianzha.  A victory for foreigners and city slickers everywhere!

This morning before we rolled out of bed Christa heard a trap go off in the porch/kitchen area of our home.  I investigated the traps I had set on the porch (where we’ve seen many tracks and droppings).  Nothing there, nothing there.  All the traps were still baited and ready.  Tentatively, I swung the door open to the kitchen.  I stared inside cautiously, then entered. 

Nothing, nothing at all. 

About the time I was thinking to myself, "Another false alarm…" my wife yelled out something behind me and pointed right towards my feet.  I about jumped out of my skin.  Two black beady eyes were staring up at me from the floor just below where the door had swung open.  A mouse!  Egad!  Shudder. 

But before I could leap onto the kitchen table screaming soprano, I noticed that the gray little furball wasn’t moving.  Slowly, I swung the door back towards me till it hovered a half inch over the rat’s lifeless body.  Still nothing.  The four-inch monster seemed to be truly and definitively dead.  After disposing of the bloodless corpse (fearful at any moment it would spring back to life in my gloved, newspapered hand) I tried to discover how it died–falling being the most obvious cause of death.  I first checked the traps I had set up near the rafters in the kitchen.  One trap, the first one I ever set, that had been in place almost a whole month had gone off after all.  But it actually hadn’t closed all the way.  A piece of Styrofoam that I had used to cork a hole leading from the rafters to the outside of the house was stuck between the metal jaw of the trap.

Based on my forensic observation I then deduced that the mouse had set off the trap trying to enter the kitchen from above and either was knocked down or fell ten feet to its death.  Or maybe it just suffered from cardiac arrest.

Whatever the case, Ding-dong the rat is dead, the wicked rat, the filthy rat!  That was my victory song.  A battle won, but not the war probably…

It’s good to have gotten rid of at least one little pest without having to take part in hand-to-paw combat though.  I didn’t even have to use a spoon.  Orville would be proud!  Ironically enough, our sonic rat deterrent device and rat poison from Canada arrived today in a package.  Now we have some serious ammo.  Things should get interesting as winter approaches.

If we were in America I would be tempted to buy this awesome-looking cake in order to celebrate this momentous occasion:

Courtesy of Debbiedoescakes.