Home for a bit, Folks
It was helpful. I got a lot done.
There were a lot of open-ended, evolving events at my house. There always is with a house. The primary storyline from the last time I was home was the rat issue. Is there a band called Rat Issue? There should be or maybe there should've been or maybe a CD title. Mine. That would mean I would have to construct a full comedy bit about the ongoing tale which really didn’t turn out to be that exciting.
To recap from the last installment if you haven’t been keeping up: The last time I was home I was about to leave. A car was on the way to pick me up and I smelled something. I knew the smell. There was just a hint of decaying animal in there air. All the cats were accounted for so I knew it was something in the bowels of the house.
I went down to the crawl space, which is large. It’s more of a basement but most of the floor is dirt. I hadn’t been down there in a while because to go down there you need a reason and I haven’t really been home for a minute. It was the source of the smell.
Before I happened upon the rotting culprit I noticed the rat shit. More than I had ever seen in my life. Usually you say things like, ‘There were droppings.’ This was a much bigger situation. There were what seems to be thousands of rat shits in what seemed to be allocated areas. I could not believe it. I thought, ‘Holy shit, I’m going to be consumed by a thousand rats like that movie Willard." That did not happen.
Remember, I was about to be picked up to go back to Canada. I pulled out the shop vac and frantically started vacuuming all the rat shit which seemed almost futile. I thought I might just have to ditch the house and move. While I was vacuuming I saw the tail leading to the rat that was rotting behind a piece of plywood leaning against the wall. When I moved the plank, I knew it was dead, but I still gasped like it was going to jump on my face. It was a large animal. I freaked out for a second but I knew I had to man up. I’ve been down this road before. I ran upstairs, put on some disposable plastic gloves, went back down, picked up a shovel to scoop the dead guy into a bag. I couldn’t get it on the shovel. It was big. So, I picked it up by its dead rat tail and put it in a Whole Foods bag and put that in the garbage outside.
That feeling of holding a dead rat but the tail with all that dead rat weight is a bit traumatizing.
I don’t know how it died but judging by the amount of shit I thought there had to be at least fifty more down there.
I set two traps with peanut butter and left for the airport.
I could not shake the terror of coming home to two huge dead rats. I thought about it every day. The anticipation. Then I got an email from a listener chastising me for vacuuming the rat shit because it could break up into dust in the air and probably give me Hantavirus. So, for a week I thought I had that on top of the terror of coming home to the dead rats.
Well, I got home and paced myself. I got grounded in my house before I went to face the carnage. I considered TikToking my journey downstairs and the reveal of the corpses but I decided that was exploitative and not great entertainment.
I went downstairs… Nothing. Empty traps. Relief. I think that’s why I worry. I’m addicted to the relief of what I’m worrying about not being true. Which is most of the time.
I thoroughly cleaned the basement, masked. I patched the one place they may be getting in. I also kind of think that maybe my house has been like a rest stop for rats for generations. Just a place to take a dump and get a nap in.
I know this is not an exciting end to the story but there was no more death. I did some research and apparently a rat can shit 40-50 pellets a day. So, it might’ve been that one guy living the good life with me in my house AND it apparently died of natural causes.
At least I learned something. 40-50. That’s a lot of shit.
Today I talk to singer-songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore about his new record he made with Dave Alvin. On Thursday the very funny comic Beth Stelling is on the show. Good talks!
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
