“I’m calling my boyfriend, because he’ll know what to do about rat control!”  Tish, who was normally so sweet, nearly screeched this sentence.  I had come home late from working a long shift at the campus library, and had nothing but a couple of hours of study ahead of me.  But, when I walked in our front door, I nearly tripped over a pile of furniture and various belongings forming a maze throughout the small house we all rented together.

At first, I thought my roomies were playing a practical joke on me.  Last week, three of us had packed up all of Trish’s belongings, including her bedding, and left a note on her bare floor that read, “We’ll miss you.”  She’d walked in, taken one look at the empty room, and burst out laughing.  It was the kind of thing we all did to each other, so it was no wonder that I mistook my roomies’ maze of household items as a practical joke.

And, I have to admit, I didn’t believe them at first when they told me they were doing rat control.  I thought it was more of the joke.

But, when I saw the rat streaking across the room, leaping over the turned-over ironing board and a box that had once held file folders, I just about leaped out of my skin.  Over the course of the next hour and a half, the four of us tried unsuccessfully to perform rat control ourselves, but Trish was right.  It was time to bring in a guy, as much as we hated to admit it.

Once Trish’s boyfriend arrived, he couldn’t stop laughing at my roommates’ maze, and I have to admit, I was a little fuzzy as to why they thought they needed to make a maze.  Apparently, they had discovered a rat in the couch, and built a pathway to the front door, in hopes the rat would leave the couch, follow the path, and go outside.  Unfortunately, after they banged on the couch with a broom, that rat ran out and leaped up and over the walls of the maze.  So, instead of leading the rat safely outside, all the belongings scattered on the floor only served to add to the chaos as we all tripped over things trying to flush out the rat and then run away from it at the same time.

Rat control was not our strong point.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t something Trish’s boyfriend did, either.  I think he only made it worse, by laughing at us and making the rat even more frenzied than before.

After another forty-five minutes of fruitlessly chasing the rat and running away from it, we finally decided we had to call a professional rat control service.  After all, where there is one rat, there may be many more.  And, I didn’t want to live in a rat maze anymore than a rat did.