Oh, Rats!

Oh. My. Goodness. Anyone who's ever done a major purge of a yard sale knows what has consumed my time and energy this week. Egads. I'm going to love having this stuff gone and the extra cash but DANG these things take time. We haven't had a yard sale since Ft. Worth and that was two houses ago.

Have I blogged about the rats? Oh! The bloody rats! If I haven't blogged about them yet, I've intended to. We have a building behind our house and behind that is just some woods. Last winter, we had a rat who was having a hay-day out there just pissing and chewing on our treasures. We waged war and finally got him. Humph. The rat era had ended, hadn't it? NO! BR got a jeep about 5 months ago and we kept the van just in case for a few months. We had stored it under the carport by the building. It wasn't until my in-laws were in town and they encouraged us to move it out of there because critters could live in it. Could they? We went to go start it and move it the next night and when BR started it up a big, fat #$^&^@#$ rat ran out!!! We parked it up by the front of our house for the next few weeks while we were at camp and in OK. I wanted to take it to a mechanic before we sold it at the yard sale just to give it a good once over. The mechanic called me back and clued me in to how much damage the rats did--he said our two options were we could sell it for a few hundred dollars or donate it to a vo-tech. Are you kidding me??? The song Gunpowder and Lead came to my mind about those rats. "I'm going home, gonna load my shotgun. Sit on the porch and light a cigarette. They want a fight well now they've got one because they ain't seen me crazy yet..."

To rewind a little bit, after we saw the rat run out of the van in late July, BR set a trap in the building. When we came back from our August adventures, he went out to the building and didn't see the trap across the room anymore but smelled something nasty. As he stepped into the building, he stepped on something. It was the trap by the front door, the rat had gotten his arm trapped and dragged it across the building. Brent said it was a horrific sight. There were claw marks all over the trap and fur was everywhere from when the rat decided to escape under the door LEAVING HIS ARM IN THE TRAP! Ehhck! This is definitely a time when I'm thankful for boys! BR did the dirty work cleaning it all up but somewhere out there is a 3-legged rat and I have no pity for him.