We sign a small contract of a few hundred dollars for a professional pest treatment of poison bait and classic snap traps. Glue traps, where the rodent will slowly starve and dehydrate, its fur forever fused to the glue. Old-fashioned wood and spring snap traps.
Poison bait with anticoagulants that eat the rat’s insides and stop their hearts.
There is more than one way to kill a rat. “Fuck, we have a rat problem.” I sigh and call the pest control company. In the morning, I see the sloped-iron curve of a bird feeder that my partner had leaned against the house to mow the lawn and forgot to move back. He was perfectly upright, floating in the sky. I scurry to the next room to tell my partner, who lies in our bed reading digital comics. I pull back the curtain to look outside and on the other side of the glass, I see the close silhouette of a fat rat under the moonlight, so close I can see his whiskers, his twitching nose. I look around to see what could have made that kind of sound. I hear a sharp clang of metal while my eyes are closed. Earlier I received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. One night, I sit cross-legged in my room on my meditation cushion. One afternoon, a brazen day-walker rat tightroped across the chain link fence. The first signs were chewed-out insulation, where the rats had made their way under the house, and the flash of movement and rustling bushes near the trash bins at night.
