wolfpangs | Rats.

So my mother called the other day--something about how Squirt, the rat ~~terrorist~~ terrier, had killed a rat and it was inside my mom's house and could I retrieve it, plzkthnx? I think, Ick. But I trudged up there, because that's my specialty at the property--doing the stuff no one else does.

So I get up there and my mom's like, "It's still alive LOL." It's all lying there in my mom's office and she's got the baby gate up so the dogs won't go in there. I watch it for a few minutes and it's moving but barely. So we decide that my mom, being a big fraidy, will hole up in her bedroom with the Boston terrier and um, the rat terrier will continue to run around outside and ignore us. I will pick the rat up with the shovel and somehow take it outside and down a fifteen-step staircase. I dunno, I wasn't thinking about the particulars.

So my mom holes up and I grab the shovel. No sooner do I lower the shovel over the baby gate than I note that the rat is, how do we say, not there? In fact, it is halfway through a hole in the baby gate. It shot out of the hole and...what followed I will illustrate with (mostly) macros.

Then it ran underneath a...thingy (free-standing storage unit dealie) and we haven't seen it since.

Also in there I had this conversation:

My mom: Blah blah, gopher...
Me: It's a rat.
My mom: No, it's a gopher.
Me: It's a rat. A gopher is an entirely different animal.
My mom: Then what's a gopher?
Me: You know, like in Caddyshack?
My mom: No, that's a mole.

It's a gopher!

Aw, writing this made me wish I were at home.