The Rat, the Banshee and the Laundry...

So I've discovered we have RATS! Yes the very thought makes me need to find a steel brush and scrub a layer of skin off. I always thought that rats only lived in those squalid houses you saw on a current affair, where you can't walk without stepping on a discarded nappy or pizza box... And although I may not win house keeper of the year, I'm really not that bad!!

Anyway this is how the story goes.... I wake up at 3am the other night, and go skipping out into the kitchen, can't even remember why now. However I flick on the loungeroom light and see a flash of something scurry from the spare bedroom at the front of the house, towards the stairs... I stifle a ear splitting scream and high tail it straight into Phil, waking him up to insist he save me from the rabid beast that I assured him was the size of a dinner plate... Anyway long story short Phil finds said rat (not quite the size of a dinner plate, but I've always been good for a bit of a hyperbole) hiding on the stairs and chases it down and out the front door. So now I'm thinking that it's all good, surely just a one off, right?? Until my playgroup mothers assure me if there is one, there is many!!!! EWWWWWW! Thanks girls.... Now all I could envision is them gnawing on my children as they sleep... So I organised the pest control to come today at 11am and must have relaxed just a little too much with the thought of their being an end in sight... So I'm downstairs in the laundry, with Zaccy helping me out, and I've got all the clothes separated into the different baskets of light, darks etc... When I notice one of Phil's work shirts sitting up on top of my sewing table (no can't sew to save myself... So it's just a storage shelf at the moment)... And I grab it and am mid throw into the pile of dark clothes, which I know has the kids new Elmo hats and Harry's cute brand new undies... When I feel something move and squirm in my hand... Too horrified to do anything but scream EICKKKKK! And watch as the rat infested shirt hits my other clothes..... I then grab Zaccy and hustle him up the stairs where I dump him on the opposite side of the safety gate and then gallop back down the stairs to try and salvage the situation.... So now Zaccy is screaming at the top of his lungs, with all the windows open due to the unseasonably hot weather (note to self - buy neighbours ear plugs and bottle of wine to apologise! Or at least get liquored up so they can't hear him screaming) So I stare at the basket for a while, to the soothing background noise of screaming hysterical child, while rubbing my rat contaminated hand convulsively against my leg to try peel off the skin... So I figure I'm not touching the shirt again, I just need to get the whole basket out of the house and allow my unwanted guest to escape to somewhere, anywhere that doesn't involve me... I grab the edge of the basket with the intention of dragging it out of the open laundry door, when the rat obviously decides it doesn't want to go where I'm taking it and jumps out of the basket, in my panic I run SCREAMING (and I really do mean screaming... Like I'm being raped an murdered!) for the back door, when I notice that the god damn rat is following me.... Now I quickly skirt to the other side of the laundry and reverse direction (still screaming), in the hope that the little bugger just keeps on out the door, but it follows me!!! After 2 laps of the laundry of me doing my banshee impersonation, I think it got the idea that it wanted no where near this crazy woman, and took off for the great outdoors...... I then thundered up the stairs like the hounds of hell were chasing me, leaving the basket of clothes on the floor the door wide open and vowing not to return until I was supervised by a stronger soul then me... I then spent the next 20 minutes scrubbing my hands raw to try and get rid of the squirmy feeling of the little critter off of me... Although am still contemplating that amputation at the elbow may be necessary for me to ever feel clean again.... And await arrival of the police, who my neighbours surely informed that I was being butchered in my house after my little... episode?

Thankfully the pest control man and not the police (go figure, maybe they heard me hysterically explaining to the kids that an evil rat was downstairs and if they went down there it might eat them... Hmmm scarred for life??) arrived soon after and ensured me my laundry basket was rat free. Although I still refused to go down there until Phil was there to supervise that I didn't get eaten by another creepy crawly...

So the moral to this story... I really don't know apart from the fact that I DON"T LIKE RATS!! And will have to put them right up there with CLOWNS on a list of things that need to be eradicated from this planet...

Until next time when I have hopefully recovered from my little encounter....