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Faces of death

I suppose I really wanted to believe in the rat-poisoning fantasy. I wanted to believe that the rodents infesting our garage would nibble on the bait, start to feel unwell, and, finding no water inside with which to slake their terrible thirst, rush to the great outdoors where they would die a quick if not peaceful death out in the middle of a field somewhere.

Not that they would die under my water heater or atop a stack of boxes belonging to our upstairs neighbor.

I went down there to check on the poison, but I couldn't find the blue-black bars that our landlord put out a week ago. Surely the rats didn't consume them entirely? While poring over the paths of rat doo-doo looking for the toxic chunks, I nearly overlooked the two corpses right in front of me. One was posed in the Classic Death stance: flopped over on its back, stiff limbs sticking into the air. The other almost looked alive, huddled with its beady eyes open, so that I wondered for a moment if it was merely feigning death. But I realized that even rats aren't that good at playing dead, and that I would have noticed it breathing or twittering as rodents do. It was a deceased rodent.

Thank god I couldn't smell them. But I'm thinking that the odor will come soon enough.

I am so thoroughly grossed out that I want to take a shower right now to cleanse myself of the rat air down there.

Ew.

February 25, 2007 12:52 PM