A Pack Rat Goes Mobyle

It was going to take about 45 minutes, so I walked over to the bank to get some cash and stopped for a street weenie from a guy in the little urban park outside the bank who has a bright-umbrella-clad weenie cart featuring the best brats in Rapid City.  He cooks them up for a couple hours around lunch time (summers) weather permitting, has an array of mustards, and a loyal following.  If you are a street weenie fan, and in Rapid City in the summer, find the main branch of the Wells Fargo bank just off St. Joseph and dig in.  You won’t be disappointed.  

But I digress. After enjoying a bratwurst in the company of some friendly ants on the wide concrete ledge of a flower bed next to the weenie cart, I wandered back to the tire store, anticipating a relatively straight-forward settling up.  

Then, Back at the Garage:  But when I arrived at the edge of the parking lot, Matt, one of the guys, came out and waved me into The Bay. The last time I got the “into the bay wave” the entire front passenger-side axle boot was ripped from an ill-fated hack we did up Black Hills National Forest road 818 near the Wyoming border, and there was grease all over the undercarriage.  It was a fair chunk of change to get that fixed. 

Matt took me right to the front of my rig, where two other guys who work there, Steve and Arthur, were peering under the hood and alternately scratching their heads.  On the floor nearby was a big pile of dead grass and stalks of what looked like wheat. 

I looked at Matt and said, “You know, whenever there are a couple guys looking under your hood and scratching their heads, it’s almost never good news.”  

The Discovery:  Matt said, “Well, it’s not as bad as the last time” meaning the time with the tore-up axle boot and the grease all up under my rig. "We opened the hood to get at the running light, and there was a big pile of grass and shit on the top of your engine, and a rat, I mean, a rat this long, counting the tail” (he stretched his hands about a foot apart) “right here” (and he pointed to a little recess behind the headlight where there was still one lonely little rat turd.)  

“It weren’t no field mouse,” allowed Arthur.  

“No, it was definitely a rat,” added Steve. 

“A rat for sure,” Matt confirmed. I looked at what was left of the plant debris now sliding forlornly down into the recesses of the engine.  

“We got the pliers on it, but all we could hang onto was a chunk of hair,” Arthur volunteered to assure me that they hadn’t been complacent in their response.  “Then it just disappeared down in there -- somewhere.” 

I peered down into the dark areas of the engine, but the rat was either holed up real good or had, as they tentatively hoped, made an undetected escape out the bay door and onto East Main Street to face the uncertainty of urban life. I said, “Heck, I drove this into town yesterday at 60 on the highway, and drove all over hell and gone while I was in here, so he must have a place to hide while the rig is moving."  

I didn’t want them to think I had so many transportation options that I could afford not to drive a rig long enough for it to become a rat’s nest. All I got from the three of them was shrugged shoulders and the suggestion that I get some D-Con before the resident rat started chewing up vacuum hoses and wiring.  

“Then that’ll cost you something,” says Arthur.

Not knowing what exactly else to do, I shrugged my shoulders too and went back into the office and paid for having the running light replaced and the tire fixed, and the rat’s nest removed (they threw that part in for free.)  

I drove out contemplating a reasonable course of action – asking myself, “What if the D-Con kills him in situ and he stinks up the rig?”  Then I noticed that the “Maintenance Required” light was still on, so I drove out one driveway and back in another and Matt walked out with a quizzical look on his face.

I said, “The Maintenance Required light is still on” and relieved, he got in and shut it off.  

“Guess we got distracted by your rat,” he said, by way of explanation.

How to Catch a Pack Rat, Introduction: I drove home; Louise came out, and I told her the story, which at first left her dubious.  But I showed her the tattered remains of the nest, a spot on the top of the engine that looked suspiciously like rat pee, and that one lonely little rat turd in the recess by the headlight. So then she thought we should check her engine too, because, like mine, her car has been sitting in the driveway because the garage was bulging with both still-packed and unpacked boxes scattered all higgledy piggledy everywhere from our recent move into the house.  Her Rav-4 was rat free. 

“That explains why the Furry Purry makes a bee-line to sniff under my rig every time she gets out the front door,” I said. We told our cat Leesha (also known as Furry Purry) that she was a good girl for having detected the intruder, but to what end was still unclear.  We guessed that with winter coming on, critters were already fixin’ to den up.  The Farmer’s Almanac did say it was going to be a bitch of a winter. 

How to Catch a Pack Rat, Part One:  To rectify the rat infestation, we decided to start naturally and organically to preserve our loving relationship with nature.  I'd heard that putting bobcat urine (which you can apparently buy, but who milked the bobcat?) on your flowers to keep deer away.  

By extrapolation, we thought that perhaps some pee from Furry Purry's potty box might have a similar effect.  So we dug out a big nasty scoop of pee-soaked cat litter and put it in the recess behind the headlight where the pack rat was building a nest.  

With great faith in natural solutions to natural problems we went to bed. The next morning, I went out and checked under the hood, and the pack rat had built a bigger nest right on top of the pee-soaked cat litter.  So much for predator/prey solutions to the issue.

How to Catch a Pack Rat, Part Two:  Resigned to escalation, I drove into town and got a rat trap at the Ace Hardware store, baited it with peanut butter in case the rat was still on board, and put it in the engine compartment and shut the hood.  

I figured that the rat went out at night to forage and then came “home” to my rig to add to what we found out was called a midden -- pack rats urinate in the midden; sugar and other substances in the urine apparently crystallize as it dries out, cementing the midden together.  Probably of some value in a rig doing 75 on the interstate. 

Next morning I got up and check under the hood.  The trap was ratlessly sprung; the peanut butter was licked off the trap trigger; there was more nest material behind the headlight, right next to the trap; and there was more rat shit and pee on the engine.  

How to Catch a Pack Rat, Part Three:  Rats. I took the rig to a car wash after cleaning everything out of the engine compartment, and gave the engine a good hosing before the rat piss, designed to cement the midden, heated way up and started to stink up the rig.  While I was at it, I took the highest pressure hose at the car wash and hit every nook and cranny I could see under the rig, thinking I could wash that rat right out of my hair.  Nothing stirred. Back at the ranch, I popped the hood over the sparkly clean engine and re-set the trap.  

How to Catch a Pack Rat, Part Four:  Next night, the same thing happened -- more nesting grass and more rat pee.  So I drove into town and bought a second rat trap and set both of them, operating on the assumption that the rat might get careless and step into one while trying to avoid the other.  

Next morning I checked the traps – both ratlessly sprung, peanut butter gone, more nest material, and more rat shit inside the newly-cleaned engine compartment.   Some of the latter was probably from all the peanut butter the rat had been eating at my expense. 

How to Catch a Pack Rat, Part Five:  I drove back into town and this time, sought out someone at the hardware store for advice.  “Try one of these,” he says, pointing to an ultra-sonic thing you plug in using an extension cord that claimed, on the package, to drive rats mad and away.  So I drove home, baited both traps, dragged out a long outdoor extension cord, plugged in an ultrasonic device and put it under the hood of the rig (they came in a “two pack” so I put one in Louise’s car as well, connected to a second extension cord.)  

Next day I checked the traps -- both sprung, trap triggers licked clean, more nesting grass, more pee, and more rat shit. The next day, we had to drive somewhere, and got into the rig, and Louise opened the glove box and it was full of nesting grass and rat shit.  So somehow, he had now penetrated the interior.  That certainly wasn’t a good sign, not by any measure.  

How to Catch a Pack Rat, Part Six:  So as part of our errands, we stopped by the Humane Society to talk with an animal control officer.  

He looked up at me from behind his surplus metal desk with a sort of pitying look, and said, “Oh, Packrats – they’re a bitch to get rid of.”  

I didn’t find that at all encouraging.  I asked if he had a live trap – thinking that if I put one of those either inside the rig or under it, that it would find its way inside the trap, since being “inside” seemed to suit the rat just fine.  

“Wait here,” says the animal control guy, and he went out to his truck and a few minutes later returned with a live trap.  “Here, this one is mine, but it’s better than the ones they have in here.” 

After paying a $20 deposit to the girl behind one of the adoption windows, I left with the animal control officer's live trap and new hope. That night I set the live trap and both rat traps. 

Next morning I went out, and the live trap was empty; the two rat traps had been tripped and the peanut butter licked from the triggers, and there was more grass and rat shit in the glove box.  And this time, there was also rat piss on the floor of the back of the rig where the seats were folded forward that stunk to high heaven and a fair bit of the rubber on the end of one of my hiking sticks had been chewed off.   I’m a fairly “live and let live” kind of guy when it comes to furry brethren, but now it was clearly Time For War.

How to Catch a Pack Rat, Part Seven -- One Last Chance For Peaceful Resolution:  Before fully putting the hammer down, and on the thought that if we took the rat to a better habitat to live, it might vacate the rig, we drove out to Boulder Hill outside Rapid City and parked the rig for five hours while we went for a hike in the woods.  

We came back and drove to our house and parked the rig, ever hopeful.  That night, just in case the rat hadn’t gone back to more native habitat, I reset all the traps again – and the next morning revealed the same result as all the previous disappointing mornings.  We were now beyond ten days of infestation and no answer in sight. 

9C.  The Cost of Victory:  Furry Purry wouldn’t ride in the rig with us until I had it detailed for a hundred bucks.  I was out over a hundred bucks in traps and useless sonic deterrents; I’d made eight  trips into town and one to Boulder Hill, and suffered no end of aggravation – but there was to be more.

Later in the week, I took the rig into the Firestone Store to have them check it out under the dash.  The rat had pretty much destroyed the in-cabin air filter in the rig and had packed the inside of the dashboard and the blower fans with nesting grass, chunks of chewed up cabin air filter, and rat shit.  

The momentary twinge of rat pity I had felt at the sight of my adversary all laid out in the stickiness quickly faded.  Not long after that, we made a concerted effort to clean the garage out enough to get both cars inside.  

About two months after the demise of the rat infiltrator, I went back to Firestone.  Matt and Steve cautiously peered under the hood, and I told them the tale of my slow and mostly dismal success in my short career as a pack-rat trapper. 

Matt said, “Hey, we went to training last month, and we asked about what to do about this kind of thing.  They told us, ‘Hell, you just take this new ultra-high-powered compressed air gun and jam it into every crevice under the car until you blow the bastard out in pieces through the mesh in the radiator’.”   

Trying to envision that, I allowed as how I thought I’d stay with sticky traps if the occasion arose again. 

Brian Text and Photos copyright GoinMobyle LLC, 2008