And how was your morning?


If you weren't outside at 6:11 this morning scooping up dead rat, I don't want to hear about how your day is. After I cleaned up dead rat, I noticed that there was a similarly themed rat in the neighbors' driveway. I didn't clean it up because I had all ready put away my no doubt disease ridden dead rat scooping supplies and was on my way to gassing myself with my antibacterial air freshener. Ew.

So, I went to work with the idea that I would just look up in the phone book under city services and call up vector control and have them come and deal with the rat problem. No such number.

I called City hall and a pleasant man answered, actually he answered the second time I called. No one was there at 8am. Losers. I called back. I asked for the number of vector control. The nice man informed me that the "city has no such service!". "No such Service" I said? What do you mean by "No such service"? There is a plague of rrats in my neighborhood and I want them gone, who do I call, he said to call "phhhhhld whhhst" I said What? He repeated "phhhtold wahhhst", which apparently translates as "Solid Waste".

Okay, Onward to "Solid Waste". No, screw Solid Waste. I'm calling the health department - if I could find the damn number. I have a sheet of reference numbers that cover everything from Bingo to Maternity Homes but does not list the number to the health department. They're probably hiding behind some cloak of bureaucracy to shield them from exposure to actual health. Time to change course.

I went to see if any one had any better ideas. Someone relayed a story of their battle against a plague of household defiling frogs .A call was place to the Police/Fire non-emergency number with the idea that "firemen know everything", the PFNE said to call the humane society. I guess the reasoning being since the rats were dead, they may have been used for underground Rat Fights? Called Human Society, left name, rank and phone number and was told to expect call back winthin the hour. Thirty -Nine minutes into hour still no call back. Okay. Minute 51, some guy from the SPCA calls me on his cell phone, he give me a number to the Streets Department.

Good. Okay. Call Streets Department. They can poison in my house or under my house if I am the owner and the resident of my house but the can not poison outside due to liability issues that might occur if children or pets eat the poison. I'm thinking the gene pool would thank me.

I have a rat plague on my hands! Rats are dancing the dirty rat lambabda in My! Front! Yard! Dead rats means sick rats means rat fleas with out a home. Homeless rat fleas spread disease. A healthy cat eats a previously sick rat, healthy cat becomes dead cat, dead cat gets eaten by, whatever eats dead cats and the sickness and deadness spreads through out the local ecosystem. I want something done about the rat population. The woman tells me to call Solid Waste and they will pick up dead rats, not grasping that I have all ready picked up and disposed of the rat, I don't want the rat disposed of, I want the rats gone. I want a rat Pied Piper to lambada the dirty things out of my neighborhood..

I see a city council meeting in my future. I see me and possibly with a bag full of dead rats. Now the rats are going to be numbered. So far we are up to six rats, three dead, two living, one monster rat still out there, untold number still lurking.