The Ruler of the Night: An Uninvited Guest in Our Home

I walked into the kitchen, ready for the usual morning rush before my son left for school. I didn’t know what I was going to him for breakfast. As I looked around the kitchen for ideas, something unusual caught my eye.

Something was off with the metal fruit basket on the countertop. My eyes first went to the avocado. The narrow end was missing. There was a deep hole in its place. The inside looked as though someone had scooped it out with a fork. Did I buy it like this? How could I miss a flaw this big? I scanned the other fruits to see what was going on.

The plums had bite marks on them. A ripe banana was half-eaten, but the unripe ones were untouched. This could not have been a human job. I was disgusted at the possibilities. I took out my phone and captured the crime scene to share it with property management folks.

“We have an animal problem. See the attached picture. Please advise.” I typed in an email.

“We have contacted the exterminator. We are waiting for her to reply with a date and time.” They reply later in the day. 

I stored the remaining good fruit in a glass container with an air-tight lid that night, even though I knew we might not eat them. There were too many to fit in one container, so I stored the rest in a long plastic container with a purple lid. I struggled to seal the lid on all the sides. 

“Can you help me with the lid?” I ask my husband. 

“Sure”, he says.

He struggled with it initially but somehow managed to close it.

“I am sorry I have to leave you, guys, to deal with this situation. I hope it’s resolved soon.”, he says before leaving for his work trip out of the country.

I spend most of my day outside to get the animal problem out of my mind. Later that night, I heard some noises. I knew someone was in the kitchen who shouldn’t be there, but I was too sleepy and scared to confront it.

I walked halfway and sealed the door that separates the bedrooms and the living room. I turn on the phone light and aim it toward the kitchen. I couldn’t see what was happening but could tell it was nothing good. I go back inside and shut my door. The noise stopped a few minutes later, and I fell back asleep.

I walked into the kitchen the next day, not knowing what I would find. The animal chewed through the solid grey Pyrex lid, making a hole the size of a large California lemon. There were tiny pieces of grey plastic all around the stove area. I had rested the containers on the top of the stove. I couldn’t recollect the logic behind it at the time. Any other spot would have been easier to clean.

The animal couldn’t get into the container with the purple lid. The hard work in closing the lid paid off. It chewed all around the lid but failed to get in.

Disappointed, I threw the four apples and five bananas into the compost bin. Apples and bananas have become our staple food for my sons’ protein smoothies over the last year. After trying many variations of smoothies, he decided he liked the apple banana protein smoothie the best. Since then, our house has never run out of either of them. So, even though I was sad to part with them, the uninvited guest didn’t leave me any choice.

I took another picture of the crime scene and sent it to those who could help.

“The rat lady is coming tomorrow. Don’t leave anything on the countertop”, they tell me.

I put away the leftovers from takeout after dinner. I had stopped cooking since the first incident happened. I feared the smells would make the home more inviting. I sprayed the whole countertop with an anti-bacterial spray and cleaned the area twice. I moved my bare hands on the kitchen counter so I couldn’t feel any crumbs underneath. I mopped the kitchen floor area with a wet Swiffer. This has now become my new nightly cleaning ritual. I don’t recall ever cleaning the house so thoroughly. 

“Dad must have appointed the rats so we do a better job keeping the house clean. “, says my son, recalling how my husband always reminds us to keep the house clean.

I laugh and say it makes sense. I drag a large leather chair from the office and place it behind the door that separates the hallway and the kitchen. The air from the vent usually prevents it from closing all the way, but I didn’t want anything to get through that night, hence the extra barricade.
 
“Can you sleep next to me tonight?” I ask my teenage son. 

“Yes,” he says, who was also disturbed by the uninvited guests.

“We can lock the door so the rat can’t get in,” he tells me. 

We lock the door and go to bed. The following day, I walked into the kitchen nervously. There are no signs of the intruder. I tip-toed around to find evidence. I spotted a yellowish liquid on the countertop next to the air fryer. It looks like an animal’s body fluid. I cleaned and cleaned like I never did before and waited for the rat lady to arrive.

She arrived later in the afternoon. I am relieved to be in her presence. It’s the same feeling you get when you go to the doctor’s office, where you start feeling better even before you take medicine.

She inspects the kitchen, finds a hole next to the vent, and seals the area. She sets a trap with peanut butter on top of the counter and a napkin underneath it. 

“Yep. It’s rats.” She says.

“Have you seen any droppings anywhere?’ She asks. 

“No, what do they look like?” I ask her. 

“They are black long droppings”, she says.

“I will keep an eye out for them. Is it common? Rats in this area?” I ask.
 
“Yes. Its Spring time, and they are looking for a spot to make babies”. She says.

“The rat is living and eating rent-free in Silicon Valley. It’s a luxurious rat,” she jokes. 

“I will check on you on Tuesday,” she says while leaving.

I go to bed, somewhat relieved but still skeptical. I don’t want to find a dead rat on my kitchen counter in the morning. I wake up and find the mouse trap upside down. The rats ate the peanut butter on the trap. I see grey pieces on the kitchen floor where the rat lady sealed the hole. The rats tried to get into the sealed hole.

“Mom, look at this,” my son calls out. 

“Look at these black things. They look like rat droppings.” 

Yes, we both agree.  

“I found some in my bathroom as well.” He says.

We inspected the house and found some more on the main bathroom floor. The rats have been crawling all around our house. 
Inviting someone is one thing, but having someone intrude and crawl all over is creepy.

I am at my limit with this issue. I had been staying away from the house during the day, but it’s been on my mind constantly. Every time I enter the house, I look skeptically around for rats. I was tired of living in fear. I wanted to know how to feel better about the situation.

“View the problem from a different lens, shift the perspective” words come to my mind from my meditation teachings.

I table the thought and call my contacts, asking the rat lady to come immediately. But it was the weekend, and she couldn’t make it. She calls me later in the evening.

“They are coming from the vent,” she tells me.

“Close all the vents and put something heavy on them. Stuff bedsheets under the doors so they can’t get in,” she says. 

I closed the vents in each room and placed two rows of four to five books on them. I finished my nightly expert cleaning routine and added an extra step of sealing each door’s bottom with blankets and bedsheets. The battleground was set, and the barricades were in place. My son and I settled in the bedroom, each absorbed in our books.

“If they could read all the books I placed on the vents, they could be a best-selling author someday,” I tell him. 

He laughs and moves on to reading. 

The next day, the rat lady arrived and checked the crawl space. She set many traps and sealed the crawl space door. She put magnetic overs on each vent and restacked the book on top. 

“You should be ok now. The HVAC ducts need replacing. The rats chewed through many of the ducts,” she tells me. 

I was more relieved than usual that night. Just when I was about to go to bed, I noticed some litter below the office desk in the bedroom. I walked toward it and realized that I missed a vent. There were tiny pieces of the pink duct material that rats chewed all around the vent. It was the bloodiest crime scene compared to the others.

We were locking ourselves in the bedrooms, and all this while, the rats were right next to us in the bedroom. I wasn’t satisfied with the books on the vent approach anymore. I needed something massive. I looked around and found our printer. I unplugged it and placed it on the vent. 

“What if they do something about the printer”? Asks my son.

“I don’t care about the printer. I want us to be safe.” I tell him. He nods in agreement.

The whole episode made me feel creepy and restless. It was 11 pm, and I didn’t know what to do. I went to hotels.com and looked for nearby hotels. The first few said $600/night. Annoyed, I decided to call my husband instead and vent for a few minutes. 

I felt a little better but still helpless and annoyed. What is the worst the rats can do? Crawl around the place? Our lives are not in danger. We are going to be ok. 

Semi-reassured with my self-talk, I go to bed. I wake up and walk to reexamine the kitchen again. I don’t see any new signs of entry. It’s first thing in the morning, but I am exhausted from the rat drama. 

My mind went back to my meditation thought. How can I change the narrative so I feel better? Aren’t rats living beings just like us? They are not trying to hurt us. They are just looking for food. My new line of thought makes me feel somewhat better.

My son came in for breakfast an hour later. 

“I am struggling to find empathy for the rats.”

“What? Why do you want to empathize with the rats?”

“If someone is beating you into a pancake, would you try to be empathetic towards them?” He asks furiously.

“No, I would defend myself. I am just trying to reframe my thinking for my sanity.” I say.

“There are times the monk mindset thing just doesn’t work.” He says. I laugh.

The HVAC guys come in later in the day for an inspection. 

“Are there no vents in this room?” he asks. 

“Yes, there are. Look under the books”, I tell him. 

“Oh! He laughs. You are so lucky”, he says.

“You have so many books; you are so lucky.” 

“Lucky? I guess.” I say.

I knew what he meant, but I was ready for all this to end and the house to return to normal. I was ready to remove the stuffed bedsheets from beneath the doors. The books needed to return to their shelf, where they belonged, and not on the floor.

One more day passed before the HVAC guy came in with his crew and a lot of material to install new ducts. While they worked, I could hear one of them through the vents. He was singing out loud to the pop music playing in the background. It took them two days to complete the job.

“Don’t worry. The rats won’t bother you anymore. They can’t chew through metal.” The HVAC guy said while leaving.

After they left, our house became rat-free. The cleaning crew came after a few days and cleaned the entire house. The carpet cleaners followed up by shampooing the carpets.

The tiny animals that ruined my peace for a week gave multiple people new business. With each cleaning effort, my mind got lighter. My husband returned from the trip when the house was ultra clean and back to normal. I should credit him for providing moral support daily during our calls throughout this ordeal.

Our home life is now back to normal, but I still hesitate to leave food out on the countertops.

How can one small creature have the power to mess with you so much? Or is it me who let it mess with my mind so much? They taught me the importance of reframing your thoughts in tricky situations.

I still can’t empathize with them, though. We can share the same planet but not the same house. Dogs are ok, but no thank you to rats.