Thursday, May 12, 2005

This morning I found a dead rodent in the doorway to the bathroom. Judging by temperature and stiffness-level, he's been dead at least a few hours. This is all normal small-town life for me, except I think this rodent was a baby rat, because though it was mouse-sized, it had the hairless long tail and the big external balls that rats have. So here's a question: How the hell did a rat get in here?? I am on the fifth floor. And my windows have screens. Can they climb up through the pipes? I am praying that my cat killed it, and it didn't die naturally of some horrible plague that will now be spread to me.

3 comments:

debl said...

Heh. True, that. At least I don't think I do. I am hoping the cat killed it, but I can't be sure.

Anonymous said...

I think they climb up the pipes and get through the small holes between the pipes and the floors/walls. We had a mouse in our 3rd floor apartment recently for the first time ever... it too was already dead when I found it, and my cat was still playing with it. But I've heard scurrying up in our ceiling (there is another apartment above us) for YEARS. Kind of nasty. Can't they fit themselves through a space the size of a dime, or something?

I bet it was a mouse and not a baby rat. Here's a description of the common house mouse which says the males can have really big, hairless balls: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mus_musculus

S-Way

debl said...

Okay, that is a relief. I think now that it was just a very mature mouse. The tail wasn't as thick as a rat's, for one thing, plus it was a darker color (not rat-tail-pink). I have seen no other signs of mice so I am guessing this one just lost its way.