Grody

After work last night I walked in the door, took off my jacket, put my bag down, turned on the lights, shut the blinds, washed my hands, and walked toward the kitchen to make dinner. And then stopped dead in my tracks and stared.

Racing along the wall behind my TV and bookshelves was a huge motherfucking brown mouse! Or a rat! I don't know - who can tell anyway? But a big brown furry darting rodent. With a long whip tail.

I was seriously just flabbergasted, rooted to the spot. I did the first thing I could think of: I ran back out, shutting the door, and rang the bell of the apartment next door, of my neighborhood drinking buddy Scott. I had gone out for a drink on an empty stomach after work and was actually sort of drunk, so when he opened the door I was slumped against it and I fell down on him. It would have been funny if I hadn't been freaking the fuck out over the rat.

He got a LACROSSE STICK out of his closet. I was like, "But you're not going to kill it, right? You're going to trap it in the net, and then I'll get a cup, and then we'll throw it outside, right?" He was like, "Dude. Just get out of the way."

And he came in but we couldn't find the thing anymore. We sort of tapped and kicked all my furniture, to see if it was hiding behind anything, but no dice. Scott thinks it probably left through a hole behind the fridge or the stove. Funny how I was so excited when, a few weeks ago, the maintenance guys finally filled in the last of the small holes underneath my window ledge, to keep the teeny bugs out, when the entire time my apartment has a hole somewhere big enough to fit a FRIGGIN DC SUBWAY RAT.

So Scott left, and he said that if I was really freaked I could stay at his place, but that's kind of a last resort as far as I am concerned. What I did next was to go tell the security guard, in case she had traps in her office. I had perfect timing because the live-in maintenance guy was just walking out the door, and she called him back. He went down to his secret maintenance lair and brought traps, and put them down everywhere in my apartment. Now, this guy always seems nice and we always say hello to each other, but I just have issues with him "from the old neighborhood," as my stepmother would say, because he has a Hitler moustache (yes, seriously), and so he just creeps me out on a really basic level.

Anyway, he put traps all around, and he asked me about all my canvasses lying around and it turns out that he is a painter too. So he was sort of going on about his latest work, and we were chatting about it. It was sort of surreal: him laying down sticky traps around my bed while telling me about how he's a really good portraitist. Finally I was like, "Uh huh. Yeah, I'm really liking oils so far. So wait a minute, the rat is going to stick to the trap?? And what do I do with it then?" And he said that the building manager would take care of it while I am at work. And he was looking around and going, "Yeah, this is a cool place. This could be a cool pad." And wasn't that an exact line from that horrible movie The Cable Guy??! Gack.

Then I decided it was as good a time as any to clean up. All my canvasses that lean against the wall and create a nice rodent hiding place I put into a big box, which is now...sitting up against the wall...creating a nice rodent hiding place. Whatever. And I cleaned up lots of stuff and rewashed all the dishes that had been drying on the counter, which was a pain.

I realized that I hadn't talked to my dad in a while, so I called him. I was holding it together pretty well by then, I thought, but then as soon as he answered I pretty much said, "Ohmygod, Dad. There's a fucking rat in my fucking apartment!" CLASSY. He was like, "Okay now, first let's just clean up the language, okay?"

(Apparently my father is a Victorian who needs his smelling salts or something. Weirdo.)

Anyway, my biggest fear was that the rat would climb up onto my bed in the middle of the night and, like, touch my face. Seriously, that was the scariest thing I could fathom in the world. He assured me that the rat would be afraid of me and stay away. (Which turned out to be true.) Thankfully I am leaving in two days. I just hope that the building manager can catch it while I'm away. Please god, don't let me come back to a dead rat corpse.