A Woman on the Edge

Ratman’s been back. He baits our garden every few months. I make him tea and admire his long teeth, while he tells me his plans. I’m not that bothered about rats. My son and I asked a woman on the tube once what kind of pet she had in her carrier, and she pulled out Terry. He wasn’t your typical pet rat, in as much as he wasn’t a fancy rat; he was clearly feral, grey and wiry, wrapped in rags. She invited us to stroke his bristly fur, and disgusted, we both did. But I don’t want them in my house.
Ratman first came to rid our beds of a brute a few summers ago. He said rats are suspicious when one dies suddenly and avoid the poisoning centre. At each visit he’d shake the snails from the undisturbed bait to prove his point.
So imagine my surprise, when I looked up from the kitchen table, and saw a rat on the cold glass roof.
I soon realised he wasn’t the only one. I could hear the mischief scampering between us and the neighbouring warehouse, where they’d disappear through a hole in the corrugated wall.
What could they be after in our garden? I wondered, looking anxiously at the bird feeders.
I called Ratman en urgence and made him climb out the window to bait up the rooflights. But after his visit, it was worse. I could hear them battling the boxes. “They’re too big to claim their dose,” I texted him.
“I don’t know what they want,” I wailed to Colin, unwrapping more suet treats for the woodpeckers. Suddenly, a bait box flew from the roof, and fell at our feet, the plastic gnawed to shreds, the bait gone.  
Smaller rats started to appear. “They’re breeding,” I messaged Ratman, “they’re running up the walls.”
I photographed one sunning himself, before angrily forwarding the evidence to everyone at Rat Control.
Finally, Ratman bothered to reply, “That’s a squirrel.”
I took a closer look. It felt like a Rorschach Test. Surely not. I know what a squirrel is. My garden is full of squirrels. I was watching one at that very moment, eating my suet.
I forwarded the picture to James. He keeps sheep. He’d know.
Squirrels do nest in the warehouse too, “My God,” I gasped, grasping the obvious, and texting Ratman with shaking hands, “This must be some kind of HYBRID.”
Unhappily, James chose that moment to lol back, “Squirrel”. He seemed to find the emergency amusing.
Abashed, I assured Ratman it was still a desperate situation, and I would send proof of the real rats shortly. It was the babysitter who captured the image for me, of a baby (with a reassuringly bald tail), posing in the rain: I’ve never been more grateful.
I sent James the photo first. “Yes, that is one hundred per cent rat,” he agreed.
Oh! the relief to have a real rat problem. Sure, rats aren’t ideal. But I was sane.
Five minutes later I phoned him. “I don’t understand, Ratman thinks that’s a squirrel too!”
“Of course it’s a squirrel!” James howled, incredulous I didn’t get his “joke”. That stupid babysitter!
Ratman had to collect the bait boxes as he’s not allowed to kill squirrels outside. “Why would I want to kill squirrels?” I cried. He gnawed his lower lip thoughtfully. But didn’t comment. In other news his girlfriend said yes. We talked about their wedding.
He baited the beds.