King Rat

A week ago, Mom took the two doggies to a local vet to be cared for and groomed, for eight days... so we could have the fumigador dude come in and get rid of our mice. Pretty big mice, in fact... I have been told that unlike our cute little field mice, these can look as big as rats.

Well, here it is a week later, and we have the dogs back, nice and clean and happy to be home. Brinka immediately went into the laundry room, which seemed to be the place where the mice were hanging out. Guess what she sniffed out? Yep, see the picture.

Only thing is, you can tell from the tails... these guys are not big field mice. They are rats. One of them was dead under the washing machine, the bigger one. They had been feeding on stuff that looked like colored granola or wheat cereal (completely ignoring the rat poison cubes lying everywhere), and it caused a bunch of internal bleeding, leading to fatal heart attacks. The vet assures me they feel no pain, just get sleepy and die. But the smaller of the two you see there had obviously spent a lot of time licking his chest area, because it was still wet and matted. And he is pretty thin compared to his compadre, leading me to believe the poison really does something not pleasant.

It is really nice to have the dogs home and not barking or running around like head-hunters, trying to flush out the mice. And perhaps when we awaken on the morrow, there won't be any more knocked over flowerpots or partially consumed mandarin oranges. Yay!