The Earthworm That Stood Up

It wasn’t an earthworm and now I never leave the window open

Late one night I come into the kitchen to perform my usual pre-bed rituals, — make a pot of herbal tea, feed the cat, flush the loo— but then my reality fractures. A movement under the dish rack catches my eye and utterly disconnects me from my track.

“What is that?” I say out loud. I haven’t got my glasses on, but I see segments. “A worm!?” I reply.

My brain is trying to make sense of how an earthworm got into the kitchen, and how an earthworm is standing bolt upright, seemingly in thin air.

It is so bizarre that I stand there mesmerized while jumbled, half-formed thoughts — of drowning worms climbing to the top of the compost bin, and of snake charmers, but worm-charmers, ‘cos there are no snakes in Ireland — wisp through my mind.

“What the hell?” I say, and the worm suddenly goes from standing upright to hanging down below the edge of the rack. I follow suit, and peer under the dish rack.

It’s a baby rat! It’s stuck between two bars of the dish rack.

I should have seized the opportunity, but even as my brain was telling me to catch it by that tail and pull hard, my fastidious side was refusing to touch the dirty thing and demanding what I would do with it once I had it.

While I blithely balked and spurned the luck of my impeccable timing — I mean, what are the chances I’d walk in to find a rat that was already trapped for me? — the rat managed to squeeze through the bars to the back of the rack, then raced up onto the window ledge, but didn’t go out the window. It disappeared behind the stove.

“Oh My God! Oh My God! Oh My God.”

Why can I never find the disinfectant? Finally, I find it and spray disinfectant over the entire kitchen until the bottle is empty.

I’m half deranged, mind you. I don’t have the energy to do it, but I know that every single surface, dish, and utensil must be thoroughly scrubbed with boiling hot water and soap. My panicked heart sinks. It feels like an insurmountable task, the end of the world. Even if I wash everything, the rat is still there. It’s a baby. There’ll be family around. I’ll have to wash everything and tie it all up in plastic bags, and then, and then, and then….

I go to the back door and call the cat.

Morsha obligingly appears on the porch, thinking no doubt that his tucker is coming.

“Morsha, there’s a rat, come in and catch it!” I plead.

Morsha looks at me, slightly alarmed.

“Come in!” I say. But Morsha has never been in the house before. He is an outside cat. He sleeps in the shed where he was born.

I grab him up by the scruff of the neck as if to give him a cuddle, but instead I bring him inside with me and shut the back door. I bear him over to the kitchen sink and present him to it.

Morsha, understandably, thinks I’ve completely lost the plot. He squirms. His claws come out, I let him go smartish and he wails at the door to be let out.

So much for that.

Be careful what you wish for. When I wished for a cat that time, three years ago, I should have asked the Universe for a cat to come live in my shed, catch rats, and have kittens that are outside cats, unless I want them to come in and catch a rat. But that last qualifier, alas, I neglected to foresee and it was not included in my appeal to the Universe, — which as we know is infinitely obliging, if only you find the infinitely right words. The Universe does not understand negatives, so the wording would be tricky on that one — it might hear ‘rats’ ‘in the house’ and come up trumps.

I kept all the lights on that night. I closed my bedroom door, which normally stays open and acts as my wardrobe. Closing it was a big task that involved removing all the clothes hanging on it, and all the thick rugs under it. My house was now in total upheaval.

I’m energetically challenged and I was running on empty already, but still I didn’t get one wink of sleep. My mind’s eye kept re-playing that worm standing upright, and I was busy mentally kicking myself for being so slow-witted.

Next day, my mother on the phone concluded that the rat got in through the cracked-open window, and might go out again the same way. “If they can get their nose in a crack,” she said, “they can get their body through it.”

My friends concluded I’d have to call the exterminator, and regaled me with horror stories of everything that entailed.

Thankfully, my mother was right.

As I was at the sink the next day, washing every last thing in the kitchen, the little rat would make brief darting appearances. It was ever so cute. Truly. Adorable. Its little face, so expressive, intelligent, brave, bright-eyed — and scared. It was watching me. It was listening.

“You really are so sweet. It is a pity that you carry so many deadly diseases, and that you dribble piss constantly. You cannot live in my house, you’ll kill me. You want to go out. Please want to go out. I will leave the window open for you. You go!”

It went!

I have a video from my security camera, trained onto the window ledge for the occasion, showing that baby rat leaving out the window. The clip is twenty minutes long, as the rat flirts between going out the window a few steps but then running back into its hidey hole in the corner.

All the while I am standing a few feet back, barely daring to breathe. Finally, it goes out the window and runs along the outside ledge and quick as a flash I slam the window closed.

Phew. And no sign of any other unwanted visitors ever since.

But I never leave a window or a door open and unattended. Not even a crack. Not even for an instant.

I’m tempted to ask the Universe to nudge the Irish to catch on to the benefits of window screens and screen doors. I’m not sure if that’s ethical though, to wish for a whole country to change its ways.

I think I’ll just carry on keeping the windows closed and making-do by running a fan for ventilation. I reckon that’s a small price to pay for peace of mind.