Little Surprises

March: In Like a Lion

 As we toiled through the ups & downs of this cold, life & nature marched on with little thought for our family.  Two snowstorms blanketed the streets, rooftops and construction sites with a glistening sheet of white.

Benjamin was transfixed by the snow... and the various construction site machines.

Who would have guessed that March in Washington would look like this?  

Serious cabin fever has set in as we have not left the house in days.

Not much yet... but it was starting to stick to the roads.

 A little burst of spring colors... amidst the wintry wasteland and freezing temps.

 At one point, I realized that we were running low on our food supplies.  I felt like death but Dave was much worse, so after getting Benjamin down for a nap, I pulled on my ski jacket and a warm hat and headed out.

Surprise #1 - More snow  

Again.  It had started earlier but it didn't seem too bad.  As I opened the garage door, the flakes were coming down hard and fast.  And, they were sticking to the road.  I will be the first to admit that I am a horrible chicken when it comes to driving in snow.  But, my family needed food and so I said a little prayer in my head, sucked it up and hopped in the car.  

Surprise #2 - A visitor

As I eased the car out of the garage, I glanced forward and something caught my eye.  I squinted, trying to figure out what it was that had been directly underneath my truck.   I stopped dead in my tracks as soon as things came into view; the thought of it still creeps me out.  I abruptly stopped the car at a weird angle in the drive, jumped out of the car... and then cowered at a distance.  It was a rodent of unusual size - or a rat.

So, what did I do?  I called Dave, of course.  He was exhausted and sounded mildly annoyed that I was   calling to ask him to deal with it.  He was about to come down and so I caved, saying "No, no - I'll take care of it."  This was one of those times I wished I lived far away from any bored neighbors, who might catch a view of what went down.

  See, the rat was likely dead; it had not moved.  However, I had convinced myself that it was playing dead and would hop up and run at me OR nip my ankles OR run up my pant leg OR... well, you get the idea.  There was NO way I was just going to amble up to that nasty rodent and take its vital signs to make sure it was dead.  To protect myself from any crazed rodent behavior, I casually walked over and grabbed the huge push broom.  As I viewed all of the angles, dancing about with the broom to figure out how to stay as far away as possible, I decided my "10-foot-pole" was still way too close for comfort for me.  

We've had field mouse get into the garage before; we are adjacent to some open lots, which have not yet been developed, which is where I'm assuming those little guys are hanging out.  Because of that, our garage is a mine field of various rodent-catching devices.  We have plastic snap traps, maze traps, hidden traps (can't see it once it goes in & gets killed), and sticky traps.  The latter are simple: trays filled with an incredibly sticky substance.  Most importantly, they have caught all past visitors, while the other traps have been laughable in their effectiveness (we found one style of trap, loaded with peanut butter, was just acting as a serving platter for our mice buddies).    

Anyway, I digress.  The point is, I carefully edged one of the sticky traps and slid it right at the frozen rat.  Nothing - no movement.  Ok, that was confirmation enough for me.  I quickly moved in and started sweeping... until the mouse carcass was in the empty lot next door.   I figured an animal would pick it up so didn't feel too badly about leaving it out there; a wild coyote somewhere would thank me later.

Here's the thing that puzzles me.  I can't figure out why or how it died.  We don't have any poison in our arsenal of traps.  I did notice that one of the sticky traps had moved and there was an empty Reese's wrapper with some small pieces of chewed wrapper next to it.  My only thought is that the rat got caught in the trap and did everything in its power to get out.  I don't glory in its death, but I'm glad it is gone before any real damage was done.  

My only fear is that there may be more surprises in store.  Every time I step into the garage, I have this irrational fear that a rat is going to be waiting for me at the steps.  I have unofficially dubbed it the Rat Garage, until I get the guts to go and do an efficient sweep of the place, and declare it rat-free.