I've noticed lots of tales of rodent infestation lately. Mindy's new love of her life is the Orkin man. Jay ponders whether death by gas or flame is more humane when a rat gets all up in his grill. And then there's Lee, with his rodent hunting Basset Hound.

Well, sit down, people, because I have an infestation story of my own.

I guess I should start during my formative years to explain a bit...

As a very young child, my sister and I had pet mice named Cinderella and Michael. I don't really recall them, except the stories about how they reproduced with abandon and caused my parents to boot them off the island.

Later years found us kids the proud owners of a series of guinea pigs. There was the albino, Spook, who died of heat exposure when we left his pen outside a little too long so he could nibble grass al fresco. There was Andrew, who took a tumble off my sister's bunkbed and lost the use of his back legs. My sister and I take comfort that my parents knew of a "kindly farmer" who loved to care for spine injured guinea pigs on his lush and sunny farm. There was Whoop and another guinea pig I can't recall the name of that had some babies (aw, so cute!) and then ate them before we realized that was even a possibility. Totally not so cute.

Let's not forget Elvis, my (female) hamster who took one look at me through the plastic of her cage, crawled into her igloo and died.

When my family moved to a rural property from our home in the suburbs, we had a half-acre of sandy soil that was plagued by gophers. It really brought out the inner warrior in my dad. I have fond memories of watching my dad combat-crawling across the yard with my brother's bee-bee gun, looking to shoot him some gopher.

Incidentally, this reminds me of a story my dad told about "back in the day" when he hunted himself a squirrel and proudly carried it home (I'm not sure if this falls under the "good eatin" category like dandelion greens) by the tail. By the time he got it home, it had lost all the fur from the tail, and although he protested mightly, his family laughed at him for bringing down a rat.

Come to think of it, I really need to get the whole story, since my dad grew up in the inner city. Hmm.

One particularly vicious El Nino year filled all the gopher holes with rain, and as we stood looking out our backdoor at the dog tossing around a bloated gopher, my dad deemed it a "lousy year for gophers." Hah!

Is my lack of rodent love, and flair for rodent destruction coming through loud and clear?

Let us zoom forward to my single girl days. I took a new job that necessitated a move. I found a darling inlaw cottage in a historic district that rocked my world. River stone fireplace, hardwood floors, arched doorways and sunny windows - it was perfect. The owners mentioned that I could have a cat, and that the previous tenant had seen a mouse, once, but once he got a cat, it was all good.

Me: "Oh, I'm not afraid of mice. Whatever. No biggie."
Them: "Okay, well, if you want a cat, you just go, girl."
Me: "La la la, cute house, la la la."

The first week, all was quiet. I moved in, and by the second day I was felled by a nasty cold. Did I mention I was also starting my new job that day? Yeah. Took a bit of an extended lunch when I fell into a drugged stupor in my warm car. That really screams "Great Employee! Woo!" This was also the day I met my husband for the first time. I called in sick my second day, and slept like the dead.
I'm baffled why I never was Employee of the Month. Really.

Anyway, after that first week, I got back to my normal routine, which involved going country western dancing four nights a week and assorted other running around and drinking type activities. I made it a point to always live within walking distance to the local watering hole, because while drinking and driving are a no-no, walking home while tipsy is F-U-N. Ah, my priorities at age 24.

I honestly wasn't suspicious when that first bag of tortilla chips disappeared in its entirety. A group of friends had gathered at my house the prior night, and I assumed someone had the munchies. An entire loaf of french bread disappeared soon after. Hmm. I began to keep my food in sealed plastic containers.

As I lay in my bed at night, I could hear what I hoped were only mice, scratching about in my attic storage area. The door to the attic sat high on my bedroom wall, and just underneath it, a 4" ledge ran the length of the room. Since I had nothing to put in the attic, I never tested the door to see if it was locked.

*cue violins Ree! Ree! Ree! Ree! Ree!*

I was doggie-sitting my good friend's Pekinese "Poodie", and as we lay cuddled up on my bed, I thought I heard the sound of rusty hinges.

Nah.

Then I heard the sound of rodent feet on the ledge, skittering along until the paused directly over my head.

Um...

Silence. Then, whump! Right on my freaking pillow. One inch from my freaking ear. Almost directly on top of Poodie. I leaped shrieking from the bed, while Poodie gave me a "what?" look and promptly went back to snoring. I heard the thing go sliding down behind my bed and back into the far corner, beneath the bed frame.

I ran into the kitchen, grabbed a broom, ran back to the bedroom and gave the bed a resounding whack. Out from under the bed ran a giant rat. Conservative estimate, body was 6", tail another 10." It shot across the room and ran around the corner, where it leaped behind my stove. I screamed and did a weird jig around the floor, broom aloft. Poodie cracked an eye, stuck out her tongue and resumed her snorting and grunting sleep.

I called one of my bar friends. "Dude, you have to help me. A rat just jumped on MY HEAD and ran across my room and is hiding in MY OVEN." At this point, I dissolved into totally inappropriate giggling, because that's how I deal with stress. "Haha! A rat! Hee! Giant! Hoo! Tried to sweep him out! Ha! Hee!"

Then I collapsed in a chair, one eye on the stove, broom held at the ready, while my super helpful friend said "Turn on the gas, should kill 'em. I have to work early tomorrow. Get 'em, Rat Slayer."

I opened the front door and returned to the bedroom, where I teetered onto of a box balanced on another box, balanced on a chair and nailed the attic access door shut with about 50 nails. Then I pushed my bed into the middle of the room, and sat up all night, broom in hand. I never saw it leave, but when I finally checked out the oven the next morning, it was long gone, leaving only some giant rat poop as a subtle reminder.

I totally changed my answering machine to say "Hi, you've reached Jenny, Rat Slayer."

A few days later, I emptied my trash on the way to work, and left the empty can sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor. When I returned, there were five mice, jumping up and down trying to escape. Another friend of mine happened to stop by on his way to walk his English Mastiff at the park next door. I used to love that his dog was petrified of Poodie. He would cower and hide behind my couch, while Poodie would make her little rrrr-arf! noises. I enlisted his help to rid my hovel of vermin, and he obliged by smashing them with my broom, one by one, on the darling flagstone walk that led to my door.

Buoyed by this demonstration of animal cruelty, I seized the broom the next evening when I returned to four hopping mice in my empty trash can. I couldn't do it, though, and ended up placing the broom over the can and carrying the still jumping mice to the yard waste bin and dumping them in. That was pick up day, so I figured they would go to a happy place, and I wouldn't have to wash guts off my flagstones.

That next night, I returned from a night at the bar with a couple of girlfriends. One of them stayed the night on the couch. When my alarm went off the next morning, I stumbled to the bathroom (which had no door, by the way, and was right off the kitchen on an elevated platform - providing me endless amusement in the form of taking photos of my friends using my high-rise john) and regarded through bleary eyes the 6" rat lying dead in my toilet, a tortilla chip clutched in one of his paws.

"Hey, girl, don't use the bathroom. Dead rat." I called to my still sleeping friend. I decided that I would never need to pee again, and began trying to figure out which nice fella at work I could con into returning with me at lunchtime to fish the rat out of my toilet.

As it worked out, I couldn't bring myself to ask, and ended up going home at lunch and removing it with the aid of a spatula and garden trowel. It was dead, dead, dead, but as I tried to get the thing out, it would fall back or wiggle and I would have to scream and do the skin-crawling boogie. Finally I managed to get it out, and I ran, gagging, to the yard waste bin once again.

I'm thinking that wasn't the right place, but dude. Dead. Rat. In. My. Toilet. I scrubbed my hands for the rest of my lunch break, and returned to work.

I marched into the local ASPCA and tried to adopt a cat, but made the mistake of mentioning that I had mice and they wouldn't let me adopt, since they "couldn't guarantee that any cat would kill mice." In my defense, I did tell them I wouldn't care if the cat was a mouser, but I was totally lying.

The next week I had my first date with my husband, and six weeks later, we moved in together.

I lasted all of three months in the Rodent Cottage of Doom. The landlords found a new tenant for my Super Cute Cottage in one day, and they were understanding about my need to break the lease. I hear the new tenant had a few cats.