Not Santa.
On the night Santa was supposed to come down the chimney, a rat came up the wall.
Ruth has told all our friends the parents were up at 3 am because they wanted their presents early.
That is a lie, her father had already opened the family Christmas present the day before.
On a normal socks-and-tie Christmas, Ian is very restrained. This year however, we had rolled six individual presents into one family present ~ a 32 inch LCD screen, (bought on Sale.) He had been keen all week to crack open the big flat box behind the couch. But unaided by any other family member I had successfully opposed this violation. Successful that is, until December the 24th when Ian whipped the screen out of the box during a wife-hanging-out-the-washing moment. When I discovered him standing among cardboard, polystyrene and plastic wrap like a naughty boy, he was totally unrepentant, He further fell by watching another present on the first present. So it was not presents (Ian had opened most of them) but the rat that got us up.
For a week I had noticed a peculiar smell in the pantry. After much detective sniffing, searching and cleaning I still couldn’t find the source of the smell. The day before Ian violated the box we found the problem; a hole in the floor behind a shelving unit and signs of a rat tunneling into the wall. We removed all food, sprinkled poison around and pushed back the shelves.
In the darkest part of the night I lay in a bed horribly close to the pantry wall and listened to hideous squeaking and thumping noises. I awoke Big Game-Hunter-of-Large-Screens to deal with the crisis. But like all the cats I have owned, he was useless. He cowered low in the bed and pretended he couldn’t hear anything, (a practice he perfected when the kids were bawling babies.) I had a distressing night visualizing a poisoned rat dying in agony.
The next morning I got Number-One-Son to investigate behind the shelves. I had expected to have to pay him a hefty bribe to look. But I erred judging the male psyche by the female mind. He was KEEN and no payment was necessary Furthermore he would use the vacuum cleaner and suck all 152 babies out of the gigantic nest in the wall. (The nest and babies had increased exponentially in my mind during the night.) It was an anticlimax to discover no rat and no babies.
We put all the tins and bottles back in the pantry but kept out all soft packaged food.
At 3 am the next morning, I heard loud un-Santa noises again. This time it was not a dying rat in my mind but a vigorous healthy animal .and the hole in the wall was increasing to cavernous proportions. The mighty screen hunter emboldened by the previous afternoon’s success, not only heard the noise, but baited a trap with peanut butter by the light of the open fridge.
We lay in bed stiffly waiting for the action.
At 4 am we heard the trap go off, followed by some alarming thumping noises. Ian disappeared and I cowered as much bigger noises shook the house.
At 4.15 am He returned triumphant with a dead rat, broken broom and a shattered trap.
At 4.30 he covered the hole in the floor with the top of a baked bean can and nailed it down.
At 5 am I snuggled peacefully back into bed and cuddled my man. He was better than a cat after all.
I thought about all those wee hour Christmases I’ve endured from my kids (including the midnight feast in the ceiling one.) It was very satisfying to overhear them complaining bitterly of the parents who wrecked their sleep by noisily waiting for Santa.
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