There are times when difficult decisions have to be made. Usually, those decisions are made in a vacuum of reason.
Where I live in Chicago is a rat paradise. The Union Pacific rail line cuts across the city and just about 100 feet from my home. It is a big mound of dirt, a rat Hilton if you will. Another 200 yards east lies the dumpsters in the alley behind Clark Street. These provide delicacies of every restaurant that fronts Clark Street. With Rogers Park being the third most diverse neighborhood in the United States, it can be said that our rats are probably some of the most culturally diverse when it comes to a gastronomical diet.
My difficult decision centered around a rat.
This rat decided to cut the trip to Clark Street in half by building a home in the flowerbed in front of our waterfall. Capers, our dog, was oblivious to the rat’s presence a mere feet away, while I zoomed in on the pile of dirt, and the eyes of the rat peering out at me from just inside the newly made entrance.
This rat was oblivious to the fact it crossed the line when it came to human-rat relations. Building into the Union Pacific Hilton is one thing, but mere feet from human habitation and next to a pond being held in by a thin rubber membrane is the cause for some alarm.
I sighed.
The rat had to go.
There are an estimated 2 million rats in Chicago. That is approximately one rat per person in the city proper. There are an estimated 2.5 billion rats in the US. Rats are great at breeding and though they do carry some diseases, they are more deadly and costly at destroying things, like electrical wire, pipes, walls, baby birds, amphibians and more. Rats cause between 10-15 billion dollars of destruction a year in the US. The next creature of destruction after rats are squirrels. They cause significant power line damage. However, everyone finds squirrels cute. Even the squirrels know they are rats with great PR.
All of this thought was in the back of my mind as I immediately went to the garden shed and picked out “Ol’ Reliable,” the rat trap that I had purchased years ago. I spread peanut butter on the bait area, cocked back the spring and bar, and gingerly placed it within inches of the hole. I then covered it with a cardboard box.
And waited.
In my mind this is fair play. The rat has the chance to either take the bait or not. If it does, death is swift. If it doesn’t, it calls for a plan B.
The rat decided to not take the bait.
I waited a day and then enacted Plan B.
Plan B was to block two entrances of the rat parlor. The rat now had to leave by the way of the trap. Again, it had the choice to either take the bait or not. A rat in Rogers Park, living on everything from Mexican to Vietnamese fare, chose not to eat the three-year-old Jiffy peanut butter.
Go figure.
I realized then that I had to destroy its lair.
Now a day after Plan B was enacted, I inspected the trap. The rat had sprung the trap and to add insult to injury still didn’t eat the bait. This was a smart rat.
So, reluctantly, I had to go to Plan C.
I went back to the tool shed and pulled out Mr. Shovel.
I filled in all the holes. With rats, they have about 3 entrances and exits.
I then proceeded to take the shovel and whack the earth all along the route I assumed the rat had made to the parlor. I then did the same to each route. The rat had burrowed just below some sod I had planted last spring to ring the flower bed. The ground easily gave way under the whacks of my shovel. I then whacked the parlor.
There was a 50% chance the rat might have already abandoned the lair. But it became apparent that I had killed the rat when the earth suddenly quivered beneath my shovel. I gave it a coup de grâce and the event was over.
Except for my thoughts.
I felt sad.
I could have allowed the rat to live there, but it really couldn’t live there. Already it was in a place too close for comfort. I could have live-trapped it and moved it somewhere. But that is verboten by law and also takes my rat problem and makes it someone else’s. Rats are opportunists, and they will find a way to the nearest garbage can and home, even if I dropped it in the middle of Wyoming.
What made me sad was I couldn’t reason with the rat.
Sometimes, there are no good outcomes to situations in which reason doesn’t exist. I see it all the time when it comes to human vs. human relations. Our current slew of wars are all about the inability to reason.
We are very much like rats in that we want a good place to live, good food to eat and hopefully a chance to raise a brood. Rats are not like us when we add the fact that we also want the opportunity to practice our faith unmolested, be educated, be healthy and adhere to the rule of law. Plus, supposedly, we possess the Divine Spark, that gift of recognition and reason that comes with acknowledging that all humans are made in the image of God.
Unlike rats, who are free of such a responsibility, we humans encounter other humans who do not wish to see that Divine Spark. These people will deem other humans are more like my unfortunate rat.
They go so far as to use that word: “vermin.”
Repudiating the Divine Spark allows such people to exist in the primitive brain. It comes to survival of the fittest, the strongest and the meanest. There is no reason, thus no compromise or way forward.
As humans, we have the responsibility to respect the beauty and burden of the Divine Spark. We create laws to keep us from that primitive brain. We create laws that affirm that we uphold the Divine Spark. When it is violated, justice is then meted out.
When we encounter problems, we must ask ourselves the question. Does this threaten my Divine Spark? Or am I reacting to that primitive brain? I cannot reason with a rat. I can with a fellow human as long as there is that mutual pledge to uphold the Divine Spark. When that fails, we are all rats, thinking all is well until the shovel falls.
READ MARTIN'S OTHER BLOG POST HERE!