My New (Unwelcome) Houseguest

Friday night, as I was watching TV in my room (yes, I had very big plans Friday night) I started to hear scratching above my head. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on, but then I realized that something was scratching around in the attic.

About a year ago, we had a similar problem -- rats had managed to make their way into our attic. My dad solved the problem by littering the attic with rat poison and eventually we terminated those nasty vermin! Unfortunately, one of the terminated rats was found underneath my mom's car as she pulled out of the garage. Needless to say, she freaked! She tore out of the garage, closed the door, and called my dad at work to warn him that the dead rat better be gone by the time she got home from work that afternoon. He disposed of the carcass, but my mom has never quite gotten over that morning.

I managed to sleep Friday night with no more interuptions from our guest in the attic. But, I had made the mistake of going downstairs and telling my mom about the rat - having become, myself, a little spooked out by the thing. She had to load her car up Friday night for an early morning photo shoot on Saturday and couldn't stop picturing the rat underneath her car from the year before. I got in a little bit of trouble for (unintentionally) freaking her out.

If it hasn't been made clear by now, my dad was out of town this weekend - so our rat exterminator was not available. Saturday night, I crawled into bed and proceeded to be woken up about every 15 minutes from 2 am to 7 am by the guest upstairs. At one point I was convinced the rat was going to gnaw a hole through the ceiling and fall into my bed. This was enough to keep me from sleeping soundly the rest of the night, in addition to the loud noises above my head.

So, here's how my Saturday night went. Fifteen minutes of light sleep, then loud scratching wakes me up. I stumble to my feet on top of my bed and jump up and down slamming my palms against the ceiling. Then I collapse back on to the bed for fifteen more minutes of sleep before repeating myself. After about two hours of repeating this routine, I started thinking of alternatives - I made my way into my closet where I found an old volleyball of mine. I climbed back into bed with the volleyball in my arms and fell asleep. The next time my new friend woke me up, I grabbed the volleyball in both hands and threw it against the ceiling a few times, and then curled back up with it. It was one of the worst nights of sleep I've ever experienced.

I called my dad on his way home from Oregon, and warned him about the attic guest and that my mom was surely going to get on his case to terminate the thing as soon as he walked in the front door. So, he came home loaded with rat poison and climbed up into the attic. I still heard scratching last night, but it was much less powerful, so hopefully the poison is weakening this guest of mine already. I also forced my dad to assure me that there was absolutely no way the rat could gnaw his way through my ceiling.

Now, apparently I just have to wait until it drops onto my mom's car. :)