When I opened the box, I discovered a neat roundish hole chewed in the top and all (I mean all) the contents completely gone. Eaten. Vamosed. It didn't occur to me that the rat might still be in the basement, but my elbow bumped a box and I heard a scurrying noise followed by dead silence.

Was the rat gone or was it stalking me? I suddenly felt very vulnerable. I was wearing Birkenstocks---open-toed shoes. I had visions of the rat leaping out to chomp my big toe and holding fast like a pitbull with rabies. I was afraid I would be instantly infected with hepatitus, hanta virus, distemper, the beubonic plague, and mange (is mange contagious?).

At that point I should have put on some sneakers, but I thought I saw movement. I took a couple of steps in that direction and dislodged a box. Whew, what a mistake. I was almost overcome with the dank, pungeant stink of urine. I forgot about my toe being chomped and began to worry about airborne rat diseases.

After foolishly scouting around in my almost-bare feet, I failed to find the rat, so it either went out through a hole or found a place to lay low until I wasn't looking. I added some bait to the cage and took the dried soup inside the house to remove its food sources (and to save my food, if you can call those little dried soup things food). All I could do now was wait and regularly check the cage. I decided to catch the rat before cleaning up all the mess, otherwise I figured I would ending up cleaning twice, and who wants to do that? --- Mya

First, I opened the basement door and was almost knocked over by the stink of rat urine. It smelled like a whole Hitchcockian hourde of rats had peed in there overnight. It reeked. I was seriously nervous about airborne viruses (is the hanta virus airborne?). If a mask had been handy, I would have worn it.

Unfortunately, there was no rat in the cage, but when I looked around, I could definitely see it had been doing ratly things. That little monster had taken the insulation off the walls during the night! It had neatly chewed around all the stapled edges until the whole sheet of insulation was detached from the wall and then it had pulled the pink insulation off the back. I guess maybe it was using it to build a nest.

The Nesting Instinct. To build a nest? Oh, oh. A rat's nest means baby rats. And with such a bad urine stink, chances were there was more than one rat around. I had no idea rats were such filthy animals. I used to keep rabbits as a kid and they were very clean. They always tried to go to the bathroom as far away from their food and living space as possible---you just have to design the cage right---and it's very easy to clean up after them. They can even be litter trained.

Rats are not like that.

Rats will annoint anything within a 30-foot radius with feces and stinking yellow urine---they pee around their food sources, in their nests, all over their favorite travel paths. Maybe the smell is supposed to keep people away. Well, this people wasn't going to stay away because I wanted that rat out of my basement. I realized I would have to go on a nest hunt. That was going to be difficult. Not only was the main light burned out (and not very accessible), but there were computer boxes piled to the ceiling and I would have to move a lot of things to find a rat's nest. I poked around half-heartedly for a while. I didn't want to stick my fingers into rat turds or to knock the boxes onto my head. So I wobbled around on the step-stool, trying not to touch anything, in the mostly-dark, hunting for a nest. I was about to give up when I noticed a poofy white fluff-thing poking out from one of the cross-studs.

That's not right, I thought. I didn't put any poofy white fluff-thing up there.

I needed more light, so I fetched a flashlight and started gingerly pushing aside some of the uppermost boxes (bonking myself in the head in the process). But I found it---about eight feet off the ground---a rat's nest. A big one. I had to use the flash to get these pictures, since it was pretty dark in there.

That doggone rat. I was so angry. It had chewed into my boxes of quilt batting, wood roses, embroidery floss, and wool and helped itself to anything soft and stringy it could find. There were holes in all the boxes. but it wasn't content to just steal my stuff. It had also urinated in all the remaining crafts materials (marking its territory, I guess).

While I'm the first to acknowledge and encourage artistic endeavors, I didn't like this one. I have to admit though, I marveled at the engineering. When I saw how far the nest extended out from the stud without toppling off, I was quite impressed. How did it do that? Then I discovered the secret. The rat hadn't elaborately woven things together the way a bird weaves a nest. Oh no. In its Darwinian fashion, it had invented a more expedient method---a mammalian shortcut. Rat urine. About a quart of rat urine had been pee-ed into the nest to stick the individual parts together.

Rat Engineering. I guess rat urine is rodentine Elmer's Glue, except that it's yellow and you don't have to make a trip to the hardware store to buy it. Just eat a bunch of Mya's soup mix and drink a bunch of Mya's water, let your ratly digestive system and kidneys do their part and voila, rat-glue. Icky, sticky, yellow rat-glue. Then you pee all over Mya's quilt batting and embroidery floss. Lovely.

I was almost angry enough to run out and get a death trap instead of a live trap, but I couldn't really justify killing the rat. Humans do far, far worse things than urinating on stuff. At least urine is biodegradable. PCBs and radioactive fallout and all the other crap (yes, "crap"---this is a mostly family-rated blog, but there are much worse words I could use to describe human garbage) we toss into our rivers and oceans and landfills are not biodegradable unless you're talking about time-scales during which galaxies come and go.

So, I forgave the rat for being a rat (not that there was anything to forgive since it's humans who have taken most of the rats' natural habitat) and doing what it has to do (organically) to survive, and recommitted myself to catching and relocating it. I added some extra enticement to the trap (peanut butter) and went back to work. --- Mya

While I was pushing boxes around to find all the nesting materials (there were two other smaller nests), I heard a skittering sound. The rat had taken cover somewhere behind the boxes. That was okay, since I wanted it to check out the goodies in the live trap (I fully expected to catch it within a few hours), but I noticed another smell. A not-rat-urine smell. I moved the step-stool, pushed aside a chair next to the freezer and found... Oh, ugh. It was gross. I found a large dead gray rat. It looked like an older rat (they don't live very long, only two or three years) with fairly coarse fur and a few white hairs. I put a plastic bag on my hand to use for a glove and picked it up. It was about seven inches long, not counting the tail.

It was not a pretty sight under that rat. The floor is concrete and the imprint of the rat's body fluids had created a dark ghost-rat on the floor. The rat itself looked fine on top but the underside was another matter. Something had drilled a hole in its neck as an entry or exit tunnel and sucked all the innards out. It would have made the hair stand up on my back if I had any hair on my back. I took a picture of the rat and then disposed of it as quickly as possible since I had no idea what killed it. Old age? Disease?

So now I was curious. Was this the mama rat or the papa rat? If this was papa rat, was the rat in my basement pregnant? Was I going to have to capture a dozen rats?

More Vermin. After disposing of the dead rat, I ran around the basement (well, wiggled through boxes is more like it) looking for more dead rats (not very enthusiastically, I must admit) and found a second pestilence inhabiting the windowsill. There was a freshly-hatched crop of more than a hundred flies buzzing in the window. Well, that explains the big hole in the rat. Probably a fly laid her eggs in that nice tasty corpse and said, "Okay, little maggots, go to it---dinner's ready!" (I told you it was gross.) I quickly opened the window and shooed all the flies out. Well, okay, maybe I shooed about five flies out the window---the rest went into hiding in every nook and cranny in the basement, waiting for me to leave. Well, that was all I could stomach for one day, so I added a bit of tasty soup mix to the peanut butter-and-catfood banquet in the live cage and went back to working on my second novel.

So, now that you know the rest of yesterday's story, I can tell you that this morning I checked the cage and found, to my surprise, no rat. It hadn't touched the food and there was no sign (or sound) of it in the basement (lots of buzzing sounds though). Rats. As they say on Saturday morning cartoons---foiled again. --- Mya

After all the talk about rats, I really wanted to talk about something else even though I have to acknowledge that rats have an important place in the scheme of things. They are intelligent, industrious and even revered in some parts of the world. They are part of the Asian zodiac and support the diets of thousands of higher-level predators. They are even eaten by humans in some countries (and on certain survival-based reality shows).

But what I really wanted to talk about was Visakha Puja. I found out about it for the first time today. This is the day in which people who follow the Buddhist philosophy celebrate the death of the Lord Buddha. Now, be careful how you understand the word "Lord" here. Lord has been given some interesting and different connotations in the Christian world. When people say "Lord," they often mean "the Lord G-d" as in deity as opposed to "Lord" in the sense of nobility. But Buddha was, in fact, a man of noble birth and even though he renounced his material possessions, he would still have been regarded as of noble lineage by the people of his time. He also never declared himself as a deity as did many kings and other nobles over the centuries in western and some eastern worlds. He sent a message that all could achieve enlightenment (I'm not sure if anyone has yet) through right living.

Vasakha Puja is considered a great day for the Buddhist world. It is a day in which Buddhists renounce luxury, meditate on the precepts of the Buddha, and practice generosity. That's all I've been able to learn so far, but if I discover other interesting things about Vaskha Puja (or about the full moon), I'll upload them. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), I saw this carved image of a Buddha in a local store a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed its peaceful, contemplative expression. --- Mya

I had no idea. I simply shook my head. He continued to smile and dangle the bag at eye level. Finally I couldn't stand the suspense any more and said, "Show me!"

When he opened the bag a crack and I looked through the slit I was hoping to see a hunk of Bavarian chocolate cake or butter pecan pie or maybe a nice big Greek salad. Instead I saw---you'll never guess---a rat! A live rat with wiggly whiskers and a tail that was almost twice the length of the rat's body. I stepped back, surprised. When you're expecting chocolate cake and you get rat-on-the-hoof (or, in this case, rat-on-the-claw), it's a bit of a shock.

"Where did you get that?" I said, quite amazed, since there's no way he would have bought me a pet rat and he couldn't possibly have caught a wild rat---they're too smart to be easily caught.

"It was right in front of the basement," he said.

I looked in the bag again, confirming that it was indeed a rat and not some tasty treat.

"How did you catch it?"

"I just kind of herded it into this bag. I got the bag from the car."

"It just stood there while you got a bag from the car?"

"Yup."

"You didn't touch it did you?"

"Nope. I didn't have to."

Now I was really suspicious and confused. Was this some kind of trick the rats were pulling? I looked up at the eaves, fully expecting a row of beady eyes to be staring down at me as a whole squadron of rats stood ready to leap upon me as I inspected their comrade. "That doesn't sound right," I said.

"Maybe it's a pet rat," said my friend.

"That doesn't seem likely," I said, "although I suppose anything is possible. Well, anyway, come in. I think I can find an old aquarium in the basement. We can put the rat in there and figure out what to do with it. I hope it's not a pet rat, then I have to take care of it. I don't have time for any more pets---especially if I'm going to be traveling."

He just shrugged and came in and I moved a dozen paint cans and found an old aquarium with a water feeder and a wheel. I put the rat in the aquarium, put a metal lid on it and put a plant on the lid so the rat couldn't try to climb out. Not that it was trying very hard. It seemed very subdued and meek. It was clearly a young rat, but not a baby. I did a few calculations and decided it was the right age to be a sibling to the baby gray rat I caught in the live trap a few weeks ago. Maybe this was one of its litter mates. My friend and I were trying to decide if it was a pet rat, a wild rat, or a wild sick rat. We just couldn't tell. It didn't act quite like a pet rat. They are curious and used to people. It didn't quite act like a wild rat. They are nervous and skitterish. It didn't look sick. I was somewhat baffled. I gave it some bird food---corn, sunflower seeds, peanuts, etc., all the while being careful not to touch the rat. It nibbled half-heartedly on a peanut, then curled up in a corner and went to sleep. I visited with my friend and went to bed. There wasn't really anything more I could do for the rat that night.

Rising and the Shining. This morning, when I peeked in on the rat, it seemed listless and subdued and spent most of the day sleeping in the corner. It was a beautiful creature though---about seven inches from nose-tip to buttocks, with dusky gray-black fur interspersed with impossibly long black guard hairs. The little pointy face was framed by an exquisite set of black whiskers and it had finely-detailed, delicate claws that looked like hands. Its tail, naked and scaly like a fine-textured snake, was impressive---long enough to rope a steer.

In spite of myself, I was starting to like this little animal but I was still worried about what to do with it. If it was a pet rat, I couldn't let it go, because it wouldn't know how to survive in the wild. If it was a wild rat, I couldn't keep it for a pet, because it might already be harboring dangerous diseases. I decided to get some writing done and see if it was feeling better later in the day.

In between chapters, when I needed to stretch my legs (writing is such a sedentary activity), I would check the rat. Things didn't look good. As far as I could tell, it wasn't eating or drinking. I was worried about its future.

A couple of hours later, when I checked it again (the cage was on the balcony) and found the rat lying on its side, not breathing. Ah, too bad. Poor little guy didn't get much chance at life---only a few months at most. But now I was REALLY reluctant to touch the rat or even breathe the air near the cage.

I hunted around for a heavy-gauge plastic bag (several, actually). I wrapped my hand inside the bags and flipped the rat over. It was definitely dead---already stiffening up. I wish I had photographed it when it was alive. The dead rat before me looked nothing like the live rat that had peeked out at me from the shopping bag. The live rat had beautiful graceful contours and gorgeous fur. This rat was ratty, mostly gray (the black hairs flattened in amongst the gray), and was grossly misshapen.

That's when I noticed there was blood on the rat's nose and a huge swollen lump on its right hind hock. Oh, oh, I thought as I remembered that bubonic plague can cause swollen lymph nodes and, if it progresses to pneumonic plague, it can affect the lungs. I took a couple of quick pictures, then put the rat inside about five layers of plastic and tied off the bag so no air could get in or out. Then I washed my hands about a dozen times, gave Nabakov an extra dose of flea medication, and hurried to the Web to look up rat diseases.

There wasn't as much information as I expected. Most of it was historical, or treated rat diseases as though they were no longer a threat. I didn't want blasé descriptions. I wanted some scientific reassurance that I wasn't going to come down with the plague or hanta virus.

Pestilence and Plague. After about 20 minutes of surfing, I learned that bubonic plague is caused by a bacterium that is chiefly transmitted by rat fleas. My house has wall-to-wall carpet and I bum around all day in bare feet. I think maybe I'll wear socks for a while until I know for sure what killed the rat.

I discovered that hanta virus can be transmitted through dust and you're not supposed to sweep or vacuum, or you can spread it around. Great. I spent most of the day sweeping and stirring up dust when I was hunting for the rat's nest and there were plenty of rat feces/pellets everywhere. Was this the rat that made the nest? Or was this the offspring of the rat that made the nest? Were there still rats in my basement? This was the third rat that had died---one on my floor, one in the live cage within 24 hours of being caught, and now one that was wandering around just outside the basement. Three dead rats---a communicable disease? Fiberglas poisoning (that wouldn't cause gross swelling would it)? Something else?

It finally occurred to me to phone the health department. That turned out to be pretty useless. The person who answered the phone wasn't interested in a dead rat. Even when I described the swelling and the blood and explained it was next to the house, she wasn't concerned. "We just tell people how to keep rats away from the house," she said. "We don't report them or send them in for testing."

Wonderful proactive stance, I thought. Let's only deal with the problem after it becomes a problem. Never mind any preventive measures. "Yeah, thanks," I said, and rang off.

So that's were it stands. If I'm not adding to my blog a week from now, it's either because I'm a 33 percent mortality statistic for hanta virus or a 14 percent fatality statistic for bubonic plague. I guess I'd better finish up all my outstanding writing projects---like my will. --- Mya

I'm in book heaven right now. I guess I bought about 70 books. It's a gorgeous day too. Sunny and warm, everything green, many of the spring flowers still blooming. Small blessings and big ones. --- Mya