It's 3 am...why am I up?
Because there was a large RAT in my nightstand! My NIGHTSTAND!!
So, here's the story:
We watched a movie and fell asleep on the couch. At midnight, Jonathan woke me up and told me to go to bed. I stumbled around getting my contacts out and my water and went to bed, falling quickly asleep. But through the next 3 hours, I woke up pretty frequently. I thought it was because I was worried about not feeling the baby kick much this evening. But everytime I woke up, I thought I heard my night stand thumping around. In my grogginess, I figured I was dreaming or else had pregnant lady neurosis. So I'd go back to sleep.
Finally, at 3, I shook Jonathan and said, "I think there's a creature thumping around in my nightstand." He immediately turned on the light and got a jar and began pulling out the top drawer. We instantly knew that something was amiss, because my birth-prep book was shredded! I was furious! But still now sign of the creature. He hunted through the papers in the drawer, gently, but finding nothing alive, he set it aside. As he began to pull out the bottom drawer, we saw movement at the back and the animal ran out of the open space, behind the nightstand, under the bed, then across the room under my vanity.
At that point we realized: This was no polite, little house mouse. This was a full-sized rat. No honey jar was going to be sufficient to catch him. He would require greater measures being taken.
Jonathan pulled the liner from the trashcan and laid it on it's side by the vanity and began blocking all other points of exit, then slowly moved the nightstand. It appeared to work, as the rat ran into the trashcan, but seeing no exit, he quickly ran back out, ran up on top, scurried down the length of the trashcan, through the bathroom door, into our closet and into the airconditioning closet.
Ugh! My nightstand has been defiled! And now of course I'm wide awake at 4:30 because I can't get back to sleep. I can proudly say that I did not scream. I did not dance around on top of my bed. I didn't wake up the whole house with my fear. I actually wasn't scared at all. Just totally offended that in my two-story house, with metal spiral stairs, a large rat had made his way upstairs and into my nightstand to tear up my things. I'm more scared of water roaches than rats. But I don't like the idea of him being upstairs near my kids bedroom. So Jonathan will be buying traps in the morning...well, later in the morning anyway.
So, here's the story:
We watched a movie and fell asleep on the couch. At midnight, Jonathan woke me up and told me to go to bed. I stumbled around getting my contacts out and my water and went to bed, falling quickly asleep. But through the next 3 hours, I woke up pretty frequently. I thought it was because I was worried about not feeling the baby kick much this evening. But everytime I woke up, I thought I heard my night stand thumping around. In my grogginess, I figured I was dreaming or else had pregnant lady neurosis. So I'd go back to sleep.
Finally, at 3, I shook Jonathan and said, "I think there's a creature thumping around in my nightstand." He immediately turned on the light and got a jar and began pulling out the top drawer. We instantly knew that something was amiss, because my birth-prep book was shredded! I was furious! But still now sign of the creature. He hunted through the papers in the drawer, gently, but finding nothing alive, he set it aside. As he began to pull out the bottom drawer, we saw movement at the back and the animal ran out of the open space, behind the nightstand, under the bed, then across the room under my vanity.
At that point we realized: This was no polite, little house mouse. This was a full-sized rat. No honey jar was going to be sufficient to catch him. He would require greater measures being taken.
Jonathan pulled the liner from the trashcan and laid it on it's side by the vanity and began blocking all other points of exit, then slowly moved the nightstand. It appeared to work, as the rat ran into the trashcan, but seeing no exit, he quickly ran back out, ran up on top, scurried down the length of the trashcan, through the bathroom door, into our closet and into the airconditioning closet.
Ugh! My nightstand has been defiled! And now of course I'm wide awake at 4:30 because I can't get back to sleep. I can proudly say that I did not scream. I did not dance around on top of my bed. I didn't wake up the whole house with my fear. I actually wasn't scared at all. Just totally offended that in my two-story house, with metal spiral stairs, a large rat had made his way upstairs and into my nightstand to tear up my things. I'm more scared of water roaches than rats. But I don't like the idea of him being upstairs near my kids bedroom. So Jonathan will be buying traps in the morning...well, later in the morning anyway.
