Sleeping with Rats

(This is from V-day I forgot it):
and the lord god Ana says candy is good! The homemade chocolates are still funny to me. But the candy corn is like a little bit of heaven.

Ok Back to the story. Although you may be thinking this has something to do with some place in Baltimore because of its popularity amongst rats, this is actually a story from my dads house. But quite possibly I could later on at some point do some relaxed observing and then write a funny short story about rats everywhere.

My dad's house has recently accquired an infeststation of small mammals. Some old houses may have a mouse or two withouth it being a very big problem. Rats are a little peskier than mice. And with each additional rat they become a force that needs reckoning with. Mice eat some of your crumbs. Rats more often chew through walls, wires, floors, almost any material. They have been deconstructing our house to construct their pathways so they can reign over this shelter. The house is a split-level and they are now on every level, the deep basement, the downstairs, the main floor, and the upstairs. Since we can't have cats due to an allergic house member my dad has had to try a hard hit with traps. His efforts have been slowly working. He has already eliminated a number of the animals. The rest have becomed at least slighty riled up.

So last night as I am already struggling to sleep, I wake up from the sound of something moving near me. It was a rat, moving on the table right next to the futon I was sleeping on. About a second after I heard that noise, POP; it just jumped into bed with me . Reflexively I sat up and made a motion to move out of the bed or something. It was briefly lost in the blanket and then immediately gone.It was a delayed reaction, but after he was gone I let out a little scream. Then, since I didn't have to be scared of the stupid little bugger anymore, I was mad that it had woken me up. I don't even know why he was on that table, there is nothing that should be interesting to a rat on it or in that corner of the room for that matter. And come to think of it, I am not sure how it could have gotten onto that table except to climb on my bed! That's creepy to think that it crawled over me and I didn't wake. Maybe he was foraging, maybe his duty to the force was to try and attack me. Either way it was just unpleasant.

During the rest of the night I witnessed them running in the ceiling as I have before, but also there were some now using the floors that we walk on. Several times I heard them make trips from the main floor down the stairs and then turn the corner to finish down the stairs into the basement. One time I actually turned around quick enough to see the little sucker turn the corner. So we are at least affecting change, though it will take more time to rid the rest of them from this house. In the meantime I would prefer that they didn't invade my space, especially when I am sleeping.