Oh, rats!

There's a saying that is used to express disappointment. I'm sure you're all familiar with it. It goes like this, "Oh, rats!"

And this morning we learned the etymology for that statement.

The Schillings gave us some rat glue at church last Friday. They'd tried using it for their "pet" mouse. The basic idea is that you put the glue on something, bait the rat (or mouse) with some yummy goodness, and then the rat (or mouse) walks on it and gets everlastingly stuck.

We finally put it out last night on a small plank of wood, balanced on our window sill. But the rat just wouldn't come, and wouldn't come, and wouldn't come. We even baited it with absolutely tempting and rather unkosher bacon grease (yum! yum!). Templeton, however, was out partying it up last night and didn't come home until around 7:40 this morning.

I saw him start sneaking across the window sill and called over to Andrew so that we could watch him get trapped. Templeton walked up to the plank and sniffed it. Then he turned tail and ran away! Oh, rats!

This is the only picture I got of him. I don't know why, but I think half his body is hanging off the window sill--not sure what he's doing; probably he's debating the fate of his life. But here's a picture of his rear end and tail. I measured our window. It's 20 inches across. His tail is also just about that long, if you're looking for a size reference.


So there he sat debating the fate of his life, for nearly 5 minutes, until Andrew banged on the window. Then Templeton left.

I suppose it's a good thing that we didn't catch him because we really haven't worked out Part B of our plan, the part where we dispose of Templeton once he's stuck to the board. He'll still be alive when (and if) we catch him, so we're not exactly sure what to do with him when the time comes.

Maybe that time will never come. Maybe Templeton will never come back. But he's a rat so he'll probably be back with some way to out think our glue trap. Rats are like that.