Siddharth discovers a surprising solution to his family’s rat problem The damp, musty smell filled my nostrils as I carefully switched on the light. Armed with a wooden bat, I warily surveyed the inside of the garage. Cardboard boxes lay scattered everywhere, filled to the brim with a various assortment of items. I put a shaking foot forward, steadying it on the cold, uneven ground. The light flickered, and I swung the batto my right. A loud thud echoed through the spooky garage, and I looked at what my bat had hit. It was a cardboard box from Home Depot, with a large tangle of lights and decorations inside it. The word “Christmas” was scrawled across it in big, messy letters. I quickly grabbed the box and ran back into the house. Last year, my house had a rat problem. Rats had invaded and taken over parts of our house. I remember we had to meow like a cat before entering the garage. The cost of getting rid of the rats and plugging all the holes was much more than $1,000. My mother thought that the cost was too much, so we decided to let nature take its course. At first, we set up some rat traps, but it didn’t catch the creature. Instead, I got stuck in one of them while getting our Christmas tree out of the attic, but that’s a whole other story. Our next attempt was letting me concoct a deadly potion and leaving it out for the rat to drink. I took a few drops of thioacetone and mixed it into a glass of milk. I stirred ferociously, trying to dissolve every molecule of the poison into the milk. Thioacetone is a chemical that smells extremely bad and is deadly. The scent of fresh milk overpowered the smell, so the rat wouldn’t even notice the smell. The next morning, the glass into which I poured milk was completely empty. This made us assume that the rat had died, but we discovered fresh traces of rat poop the next day. That meant that the rat and its family had not died, despite the consumption of a deadly chemical. My next attempt to kill the furry creature was to leave food out on the dining table and then hide underneath it. In theory, when the rat came to nibble away at the food, I would hit it with a twenty-pound weight and squish it. I stayed up the entire night watching TV on my laptop, but no rat came. I went to sleep at around eight a.m., and the entire bowl of food had been devoured by the time I woke up an hour later. I thought rats were nocturnal creatures, but it turned out this one was diurnal. Spacing Out Finally, one night, my mother left some of her khichuri outside. This was completely accidental, because she had gone up to do something and had forgotten about covering the food. Khichuri is supposed to be an Indian comfort food made with rice and lentils. The way my mom made it, though, was by mixing loads of spices with Quaker Oats porridge. My dad and my brother made fun of her food, and I did too occasionally because it smelled bad and looked pale green, which was not the color it was supposed to look. It tasted like an apple; some parts were crunchy, while others were flavorless. The next day, we found the rat lying next to the bowl of khichuri. When my dad (who’s a doctor) pressed his ear against the rat and listened for a heartbeat, he shook his head and said, “He’s dead.” Finally, the rat had died, but only because of my mother’s bad cooking.
By Siddharth Mukherjee, Art by Leticia Cheng
