Okay, it was a rat.

Because our lot borders on a little scrap of unusable swampy land, and because we have a cat who likes to hunt, we've had more than our share of critters in the house. This does not mean that I am used to it. There have been a couple of squirrels--one who lived, birds and evidence of their deaths too many to count, and, as much as I hate to admit it, a few rodents. I prefer to think of them as field mice. I've been lucky enough to only see one, two, if you count the subject of this post.

Denial is one of my favorite coping mechanisms, I know it's not healthy, but it works for me. And names matter, right? So, when my daughter asked the other night, "Is there any chance there is a rat living under my dresser?" D and I responded that the chance was very small, but a chance all the same. Of course, I knew it couldn't be a rat, maybe a cute little mouse.

She was going through clothes and giving things away, and found its turditude in a drawer. A thorough search by her dad ensued as she and I cowered and tried not to squeal. Not one to face the task alone, D rallied the troops, gathering our two mini schnauzers and the killa cat and closing us all into her room. Ever the delegator, when he came upon the intruder, he tossed the cat in next to it. She came out in a flash and soon all the four-leggeds were lined up at the door; I was ready to get out, too.

Believe it or not, D did not feel the same urgency in dealing with the problem as M and I thought he should. "I'll take care of it tomorrow. He's not going anywhere tonight." Luckily, this turned out to be correct. The next day, true to his word, D consulted with the guy at Lowe's, bought a trap, set it, removed all of the dresser drawers, covered the front of it with a large metal sign that said ROAD CLOSED. If only the rodent could read. He reported this arrangement via cell-phone on his way out, along with the fact that he'd managed to jam its tail in a drawer in the process. He had grabbed the two inch end of the tail with pliers, hoping that the critter was still attached, but the wounded mouse had skittered away.

That evening, M came to me with "I think the rat is out of the dresser."

"What makes you think so?"

"The cat's interested in an area behind the desk and Major keeps cruising through the house with his nose to the ground. And I'm not positive, but I may have seen something move in my peripheral vision."

"No, it can't get out of there." What can I say? Denial is my friend.

I kept my door closed and hoped my dear reliable husband, or M's reliable and young (read, thinks he's invincible) fiancé would be along soon to take care of the, um, problem.

Forty minutes later and I was face to whisker with this thing in the kitchen. He had the audacity to be sitting on the kitchen counter! I alerted M, "I see him! I see him! He's right here. I see him." My shouting confused him a bit and he took refuge behind the can opener. She sent out the emergency call to the fiancé. We could hear the mild exasperation in his voice as he responded to our shouted cries. "Okay, I'll get him, be there in a few minutes."

I spent every second of those few minutes with the flashlight tuned on the small visible patch of gray fur. Of course the light did nothing, but it might have made him be still and it made me feel I had him trapped. It's related to that denial thing, don't you think?

My future son-in-law is ingenious and brave, too. He went after the rodent with a basket and an oven mitt. Unfortunately, the little guy evaded him and ran another lap around the family room before ending up in the foyer closet. J created barricades and and settled in to find the vermin.
Finally he trapped it into the corner made by the open door. "Bring me a box with a mouse-sized hole and a ruler" he requested with MacGyver-like cool. Soon the critter was turned loose into the woods, experiencing the happiest day of his life except for the hurt tail. We were left to praise J and marvel at the adrenaline rush that a mouse, I mean, rat chase creates.

The reporter in me knows it truly was a rat, even though I hate to be wrong and can't stand the sound of it. The fiction writer says it was a field mouse, albeit a large one, with a long tail.