Living with the Rats

I wouldn’t exactly say my back yard is paradise, but it’s pretty nice. One of my favorite things to do is to sit on my patio, looking over all the blooms and various plants, and watching the birds and the squirrels play in my back yard.
   
    One evening, I was sitting on the patio with my neighbor, and all of a sudden her eyes grew very big, and she got real quiet. I turned around to look at what she saw, and sitting there the bird feeder, as if he belonged, was a rat.
   
    The next day, I began my quest to rid my home-made paradise of this invader. I set out to reclaim my backyard for the cardinals, the butterflies and the squirrels.
   
I soon found out I had a slight problem. Rats and squirrels are in the same family. So any trap or any poison I would lay down for the rats, there was the potential of the squirrels getting it, and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice the squirrels just to get rid of the rats.
   
    So, I asked my son to get the bb gun, and I started taking target practice at the bird feeder.  I knew the general area in which they lived, because I’d now seen babies. But the gun was so weak, that it wasn’t even worth the effort it took to pump it up. I think I got close on a couple of shots, but the idea in itself was futile.
   
    My next attempt came at attaching a baffle to the bird feeder so the rats couldn’t get to it. It seemed to work for a short time, until another morning, I noticed a rat on another bird feeder out farther in the yard. And then there was another one by my neighbor’s fence. I realized that no matter what I did, the rats were among us.
   
    Resigning myself to life with the rats took some getting used to. I decided that if I had to live with them, then at least I could try and move them to the farthest part of my yard. So, I tore out all of the foliage where I thought they lived. My motive was to stir their nest, maybe provoke them to move away…far away…but I’d accept just moving them away from the immediate yard area and toward the back of my property.
   
    Now, I’m sure the rats are still living here among us, but removing the plants seemed to work for the moment because I have not seen a rat since. Just like “you’ve got to have the rain if you want a rainbow” and “you can’t have a rose without the thorns”, I guess I can’t enjoy my squirrels without a few rats. 
   
    Isn’t that a lot like life? There’s always some rat…some petty annoyance…that disturbs our tranquility. I don’t think we’ll ever totally rid ourselves of these “rats” in our lives, but just as I removed the foliage that was closest to the house, we can create the environment where we push the rats in our lives to the edge of our property!