8 Bags of Mice. Z.C. Christie
almost dead.
Mom: Don’t you two go out in that yard! And get away from that door!
I dial the exterminator and tell him for God’s sake, to get over here and start picking up these dead rats, I have children here. “Ah’ll git to ya when Ah can,” he says. “Lotsa people got lotsa daid rats dis month, ma’am. Do yew know how minny yew gots?”
I tell him that there is no way in hell that I am going out there and get a body count. He finds this very funny and laughs. I hang up the phone and announce he is weird.
Finally the white truck pulls up into my driveway. I stand next to the garage and wait as he gets out. The boys are down to the truck in a flash, asking if they can watch him pick up the dead rats. “Why, shore,” he says, smiling at them.
Ipronounce, giving them the evil mother eye and ordering them away from the truck. They back up about three inches. “Oh, ma’am,” says the exterminator, “Dem rats ain’t gonna be in no shape ta do nuthin’ ta dose boys. Let em come wid me.”
“You just go get the rats,” I tell him, looking stern and crossing my arms over my chest. So he takes a cardboard box from the front seat and walks around to the back yard. The boys race back into the house so that they can watch what happens through the glass patio door. I go in to watch, too, but not quite as enthusiastically.
I mean, you watch some guy walk all over your yard, picking up dead rats by their tails… your arms fold around yourself and your chin sinks lower and lower on your chest. It’s just so grossly yucky, you can’t help it. The boys poke each other as he gets to the rat that was the subject of so much debate earlier this afternoon.
Kid One: Saw it move, bet it isn’t even gonna die. Shoulda been dead by now.
Kid Two: He picked it up by the tail, of course it moved, dummy. You’re dumber than you were this afternoon. Mom, isn’t he dumber than he was this afternoon?
Mom doesn’t get a chance to answer, apparently the man retrieved all the dead-for-now-rats and is walking out of the yard, back to his truck. The boys tear out of the house and stampede down the driveway to escort him back.
I run after them, shouting for them to get back in the house this stopping about 20 feet away from the man and his vermin filled box.
He’s opened a different door on the back of the truck bed thingie, and has taken out some large, white, paper-looking squares. He places them on the driveway, then reaches into the box, lifts a poisoned rat by its tail and then drops it on the paper square, in God’s name are you hriek, my hands flying up to my face.He looks at me. “Ahm stickin’ da rats to dis trappin’ paper, ma’am. Dey a lot like dose sticky tubes, on’y stronger. Cain’t hev em rollin’ roun in da truck when Ah drives, too hard ta git em out latuh. Dis keeps em in one place, till deys all da way daid.”
“All the way de… all the way Boys! Get back here this second!”
They stay right where they are, the little creeps, knowing full well that I am not about to go one step closer to what’s going on. The exterminator is smiling and talking to them as the rats go splat onto the sticky paper. Seven, for this round.
My hands have crept from my cheeks to my temples, as I stand there, pressing them in on my skull and thinking… He finishes and tosses the now empty box back through the window of the truck to land on the front seat. . He then picks up a sticky, rat encrusted paper by the corners and tips it into the opened door on the side of the truck bed thingie. I cover my ears, not wanting to hear it land. He picks up another paper, tips it in.
My boys are standing on each side of him, and after the last paper full o’ rats is tipped in, they crowd close to the opening and practically stick their whole head in there. I scrunch my eyes shut and just shriek at them.
“Will you for get from that Get your out of there!!!”
The man is scribbling on a clipboard. “Why, ma’am, I tink deys jes tryin’ ta see dat big ole rat dats in dere. One Ah gots from da last place Ah wuz at.”
“Big ole… big ole rat? Bigger than the ones I just saw? BOYS!!!”
“Oh, it not goin’ anywheres. All stuck up on dat paper. Good size rat, prolly go poun’ and a half, two poun’ at least. It prolly mosly daid by now, anyways. Yew boys wanta see?”
The blond demons hop up and down madly. Yes! Yes! Yes! They exclaim in delight, as I take a few steps forward, determined to smack the both of them in the head… maybe I’ll smack the exterminator, too.
Into the truck bed thingie door goes the exterminator’s hand, and out it comes, holding a sticky paper that has a fat,furry brown rat splayed out on it grotesquely, at awful angles. My rat phobia overcomes me at last and I stop dead in my tracks, watching in horrified fascination as he shakes the paper and the stickied-up rat, I start looking around for something to throw at the exterminator guy. Preferably something hard. His radar must have been tuned in to the waves of the impending destruction I was unmistakably flinging at him, because he picks up the paper and tosses the unspeakable object back into the hole from whence it came, then shuts and latches the door. The boys groan in unison.
He tears a copy of the bill off his clipboard and wisely hands it to one of the boys to bring back to me, and winks at them. that wink says.
They trudge morosely back up the driveway, giving me baleful looks that say plain as day, you-never-let-us-do-anything-cool, hand me the paper and then disappear into the house.
The exterminator and I stand and stare at each other for a few seconds.
“Yew not from roun’ heah… are ya?” he says, turning to climb into his truck.I make a face at him and his truck, then turn to go into the house so I can take a long, long, hothothot shower. When I’m finished, I sit down with a newspaper and start the search for a new rental house. Ah cain’t face da sight of mebbe hunnerts moh mos’ly daid rats on mah lawn. Dey done won da Rat War, yup.
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