When The Light Is Green, The Trap Is Clean

I thought: Worst case scenario, one of us will find it dead one morning.

Fairy Tales has a rodent problem. Last Thursday, we had a guy come in from Truly Nolen and set up traps everywhere. Upstairs, he set up those hardcore, old school mousetraps. You know, snap, break-your-back, dead mousetrap type mousetrap. Around the back areas he set up these styrofoam-and-glue mousetraps. Like a tar pit. The rodent goes for the little bit of Slim Jim ('They love Slim Jims' said our Truly Nolen guy, a burly sort of a fellow who would look right at home waving a sword around in one of the Lord Of The Rings movies) and can't get unstuck. The rodent just freaks out, starves, or has a heart attack.

I thought: Best case scenario, I won't be at work the day they find it.

Friday comes and goes, Saturday too. Nothing. Maybe they moved on. Maybe they're super smart. Maybe NIMH has gotten ahold of them and they're just watching us from the shadows, waiting, planning, twirling their whiskers. It occurs to me around this time that I'm scared to death of this rodent. Of this rat. Our rat. I've been trying to convince myself that this isn't so. I've fail.

Sunday. I'm opening the store by myself. It's just me and Amy working. Sunday, noon to five. Short day, easy day. It goes by quickly. Everything's going so well, as they say in Moulin Rouge. Then 4 o'clock rolls around and I have to get something out of the wrapping room. It's called the wrapping room cause that's where all the giftwrapping is done. It's also where one of the glue and styrofoam tar pit mousetraps is located. I make my way down the back hallway, full of junk and toys and boxes....and almost step on the largest fucking rat I've ever seen. Stuck. In the glue. Near the door to the wrapping room. Slick black-brown hair, pink-white belly, fat and sleek. Its hairless, cord of a tail, longer than my hand, flailing around like a gray question mark.

Its tiny oil drop eyes stare at me, freaking out, wide. The tail flaps. Then it starts to scream. Please understand that when I say scream, I mean scream. Not squeak. Not squeal. Scream. I've always heard that rabbits scream like people. Well, I'm here to tell you that rats scream like people too.

I turn around. Gooseflesh. Adrenaline. Cold stomach. Thank God I hadn't eaten anything that day. I would have thrown up. I freak out as much as the rat. I feel like someone is putting its fat rat body on one of my shoulders. I freak. I wig out. I shudder. I'm scared of rats. I don't feel sorry for the rat. But a part of me wished that it would have went upstairs and just gotten itself killed quick.

Its oil drop eyes. Its tail, longer than my hand. I make some phonecalls, tell my bosses that we've captured the rat. I closed the store, left the rat in the dark. To die. And that's all well and good. It got caught. That's what happens when you get caught. It's oil drop eyes. The next day, Monday, it was still alive. Tar pit. Dinosaurs. It's little quick-quick, slow-slow rodent motions. Its black within black eyes. Tiny. Its little instincts, telling it to struggle, to scream, to fight.

I thought: All these scenarios are awful.