Rats.

And I mean that literally.

I saw a rat once in New York City.  We were standing in Central Park trying to decide what to do next with our day when a big, giant rat ambled out from under a bush, looked at us, blinked and leisurely crossed the path to another bush where he disappeared.  That was the closest I ever wanted to come to a rat.

But then I moved to Europe.  When an American thinks about Europe, images of castles and cobblestones often come to mind.  Romantic lands rich with history have been teasing our imaginations for years and years until one day, maybe we are lucky enough to come see part of it for ourselves.  (Even after more than four years of living here, I still have to stop and pinch myself sometimes at the unbelievable opportunity that meant we actually get to live here.)  But there is good and bad with everything, and one little point in European history was pretty ugly.  The Black Plague.  If rats ever had any chance at all at a positive public image, the Plague sort of sealed the deal otherwise.

When we had the dog and cat, we didn't have to worry much about rodents.  But we've been pet-free for a year now, and over the winter, we started seeing signs.  What's that they say?  Something like, for every one that you see there are hundreds that you don't?  One day, I saw a dead rat in the road.  Once, there was an unexplained rustle in the bushes on the back patio.  A sighting in the neighbor's garden.  Another sighting in the garden on the other side.  But surely, there was a forcefield bubble around OUR garden, right?  That's what we told ourselves.

It wasn't just in our neighborhood.  It appeared to be an epidemic this spring.  There were others on the road in other neighborhoods.  One day, the children at school were looking through the fence at the pasture below, watching one die (its bloated body had clearly been poisoned.)

Then one day, I was serving lunch to some ladies.  As part of my duties as the VP of the American Women's Club, I was required to sit on the board of the ISG (International Study Group).  The ISG ladies are pretty awesome.  An older group of women, they are dedicated to educating themselves by bringing in monthly speakers on a variety of topics.  They also like to have lunch, so our board meetings were at each other's houses, and the hostess is required to serve lunch.  The ladies on the board reminded me of my Grandma Bares.  Classy, and dressed to perfection.  Potentially intimidating and certainly not afraid to demand certain standards, especially of society.  Making them lunch would be nerve-wracking, but at the same time, an exciting culinary challenge.

My lunch was back in February.  (I thought about blogging about this back then, but I was too traumatized - and not because of the ladies.)  It was cold, so I made wild rice soup and pecan pie.  We started the meeting with coffee, had our meeting, finished lunch and I was on my last coffee service when I saw it.  I was seated at the head of the table, with a view of our patio and garden and there it was.  A large brown rat. Taking a  leisurely afternoon stroll across our top patio step from one set of bushes to the other.  It was followed a few minutes later by another one.  They were clearly mocking me.  As if by their actions they were saying "So you thought you would try to serve a proper ladies' lunch?  We'll see about that (cue wicked laughter) Mwaahaahaa...."  

Thankfully, the ladies never noticed and the only thing they have to talk about from lunch at my house was this Minnesota girl's wild rice soup.  A few days later, our neighbor came to the rescue and brought over some rat poison (they hand it out for free at the commune, and he had extra.)  John was out of town and still teases him about bringing his wife rat poison on valentine's day.  I never wanted to consider poison as an alternative, but with thoughts of the black death in the back of my mind, on that particular day it was a present I was happy to have.

The poison got eaten, and the sightings (both dead and alive) stopped.  Early this summer, though, our bushes were invaded by a new resident.  These teeny-tiny little mice.  They were rather cute, with their big giant ears and little tiny bodies, but they were very bold.  One night, we were having dinner on the patio when no less than five of them came out to see what we were serving.  We don't have screens on our doors, so if we wanted to be able to open our doors at all this summer, it was clear we needed to do something before they moved themselves right on into the living room.

About the same time, our neighbor had similar sightings, and his son claimed to have seen another rat.  No way, we all said, just little mice.  But the poison went out, got eaten and we waited.  One morning, Luke and I went outside (I think it was back when he was looking for snails.)  There, right at his feet, was a dead mouse.  I screamed and turned.  But there, just a few feet away in the other direction, was another dead one.  I screamed and turned again, and there, lying in the middle of the backyard, was a large dead rat.  That scream brought my entire family (and probably most of the neighbors) out to the patio.

Our garden had become a land of rodent horror.

The remedy was swift and quick.  Composing myself, I scooped up the dead bodies with an old shovel and dumped them in the compost bag with the grass and that was that.  And hopefully, the message was sent loud and clear to future generations: You'd best be advised to move elsewhere.