The Saga of Junior

or....A Rat's Tale

Junior is big and ugly. He first appeared in my mother's garden last weekend. Well, that's when she first noticed him, at least. Junior is an illegal alien. He is a Norway rat. Yep.

So, mom got the poison down into the burrow that we thought Junior had made and we waited. Early the next evening, we watched from the livingroom window. And he appeared. Drat. At the same time that my mom had poisoned the hole, I had nailed some wire mesh along the edge of the deck, along where Junior had been entering the garden. I had weighted the mesh down along the bottom with some large pieces of granite. Not to be hindered, Junior had burrowed underneath. On to plan B.

We decided that we needed to actually SEE Junior eat the poison. Once we could see him eat it, we knew it would be just a matter of time before "bye-bye, Junior". We also knew that we didn't want to just leave the poison briquette out where our other cute rodents would get to it.

A plan took shape. We went fishing for Junior. Mom tied the briquette to the end of a looooonnnnnggggg string. The string had a loop at the non-poison end that could be draped over the handrail post of the deck. That way Junior could munch a bit, leave, and my mom could haul the left over in for the night. Just before dusk, she set the bait. We waited.

Junior appeared. He completely ignored the bait! He wandered the garden, sticking his little nose in the soil looking for any last remaining bits of bird seed. Around and around he went before he finally came upon the bait and sniffed it. He turned around and moved on to more seed searching. We couldn't believe our eyes. Why wasn't he interested? We began to get very bored with Junior's behavior and decided to take turns at 'watch'. It was mom's watch when the action started. Amanda and I had left for tv viewing when we heard my mom yell that Junior had grabbed the string and hauled the briquette bait to the opening he'd dug to the garden.

Big problem...the bait was too large to fit through the hole and he abandoned it. Junior made his exit under the stairs to the deck. Sigh. This was getting very annoying. This being outwitted by a rat! Amanda took her turn at watch.

I was getting too tired to care. My mom and Amanda seemed quite excited and decided to keep a running dialog about all rat actions. I could hear the details while I watched the television.

It was nearing dark when Junior made his next move. He made a furtive dash from under the deck and grabbed the poison briquette. Then he made a quick U-turn and a dash back to under-deck safety. The string was now attached to the post and then draped across the stairs, disappearing in the void beneath the bottom step. Now what? Then Amanda called to my mom to see if she could see what was happening from her vantage point at the kitchen window. The string was taut, then slack, then taut again. There was a 'tug-a-war' going on under the deck between Junior and the post!

Now, you have to understand that this all took about two hours and it was becoming quite dark outside. My mom tried to see what had happened with the string but she could tell if it was still taut. She didn't know what to do. Should she venture out to Junior's territory and try to haul in the line? I recommended that she wait until morning. If Junior had succeeded in removing the bait from the line there was nothing that could be done. If he'd eaten it all - great!

We all relaxed for the remaining bit of evening and then said our quiet "good-nights" to Junior and headed for a good night's sleep, hoping that Junior's last supper had been successful. When morning came around, I took my cup of coffee to Mom's. She asked if she should check the line. I told her I'd keep an eye out for danger! She hauled in an empty line. Junior had gnawed it through and taken the bait. While we were pleased that success was at hand, we did feel a bit sad at having to kill Junior.

Day turned to dusk and we started randomly checking out the window to see if Junior was in the garden. Hour after hour and he never appeared. Things were looking up even as we felt sort of bad. I told my mom that she should wait a few days before putting the bird feeder back out.

Just to be sure.

Just to be sure, the next morning my mom placed a small stone near Junior's hole to the garden. It would be easy for him to move it out of his way and would be an indicator to us that he was still around. That was this morning. At dusk I walked to the window to check the garden. The stone was still in place and there was no sign of Junior. Just before dark my mom checked.

"Oh no! I saw something move over by the stones, " yelled my mom.
I went to the window to look. Sure enough, there was Junior.

On to Plan C.