Oh my fucking God I found the motherfucking rat

When I came home this evening at 6:30 , having left the house at 7:00am, I noticed that there was a smell in the kitchen. It was a bad smell. A too sweet but not sweet smell. The Kid noticed it too. We checked the trash, which also smelled, but which did not smell like this.

We proceeded to sniff our way through the house. Stronger in the living room and dining room. Not as strong in my study or the bedrooms. In the entry way it was Jack LaLane strong. But on the stairs down to the laundry room it was Lou Ferrigno strong. We sniffed through Ricardo's study and the guest room. Less powerful there.

And I knew. The whole time I knew but didn't want to face it.

That was the smell of dead rodent.

And it was in the laundry room. And it could be anywhere.

By the time we made it into the laundry room it was Arnold Schwarzenegger, pre Terminator, on steroids, just in from Austria, 1970s smell. I started to gag. The Kid ran up to his room to put on his batman mask and retrieved his ninja knife. (As an aside, which is what this is, wtf goes through 9 year old boys' heads? a plastic knife and a rubber face mask?). I fended off the nausea that threatened to rob me of my $5 value sub from Subway, and we began the search.

It could have been anywhere. I tried behind the work bench, in the luggage, and behind the washer and dryer. We looked through the old crib, under the changing table and between the spare dining room chairs. We looked under the sink, through the shelves and between the brass bed that one day I really will spray paint and use in my guest room because it's so much nicer than the one I have in there. But alas, no dead rat.

And then I thought the smell would knock me right over. As I leaned over the cinderblocks beside the boiler, I smelled it. And then I saw the tail and the puddle of gore that it lay in, 3/4 of the way under the boiler.

The way rat poison is suppposed to work is that they eat it and it makes them so thirsty they leave the house to find water and then they drink water and the poison is activated and they die. But it hadn't been working. Oh the poison was being removed, but the rat was still around.

Last Monday we saw it. The kid came to me and said, "Mommy the rat is sleeping in the family room." So I went downstairs to see what the hell he was talking about. Sure enough, there was the mangy, manky sonofabitch, sleeping (or more likely beginning to die) right in front of the TV. I thought it was dead so I turned on the light. NOT DEAD!! It jumped up and scurried towards us. I screamed as it ran through my legs. The kid screamed and ran upstairs to get his wooden sword (that one made sense to me). I ran upstairs to get a broom, but to no avail. We could not find the rat.

Also the rat ate my favorite plant ever, Instrument Salad, the Christmas Cactus that my neighbor gave me and which The Kid named when he was only 3. And I loved that fucking cactus.

But now I was faced with the tail and the dilemma. How do I get it out? I had the broom but that only pushed it further under. Except the part that stuck to the floor in its own entrails.

I was going to have to touch it. I went upstairs and double gloved. The Kid got bags and I went down again. With a wrenching shuddering heaving effort, I extracted the rat from under the boiler, thrust it in a plastic bag, tied it in a knot, and threw it in the trash which I then took out and threw in the outside trash. I poured bleach over the spot two times and left it to soak. I opened all the windows I could and tore up the stairs.

Having done the deed, I literally ran to my bathroom, ripped off my clothes, threw myself into the shower and scrubbed every inch of my body from head to toe as if I had OCD. There may not be enough colazepam for this experience.

And with that, Instrument Salad was revenged.