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By Renee Burns Lonner

I live in a suburban area of Los Angeles on a street of modest and neatly kept homes with neatly kept yards. My housekeeping standards could be characterized as super-clean but definitely short of psychotic. You would guess that the word “rat” never enters my vocabulary when speaking about my house or yard.

You’d be wrong.

Several years ago, my gardener built a lovely vegetable planter in my back yard, and I planted all kinds of gourmet lettuces, herbs and — my favorite — snow peas. They started to grow and I was thrilled, like a farmer growing actual food to actually eat. I was so proud. Until I went out one morning and the lettuces had been eaten down to the nubs. The next morning the nubs were gone.

My nursery is a second-generation family-owned business and let me tell you, they know their stuff. I went in and described the problem, asked if there were racoons suddenly in the area, and got a look like they thought I was somewhere between an imbecile and a moron.

One of the owners simply said “rats.” I replied, to his total amusement, “Can’t be, rats don’t eat lettuce!” He sighed a patient sigh and said they “eat anything and everything.” Who knew?

Not to be outsmarted by a rodent, at the end of that season, I asked the gardener to build a 4-foot raised vegetable bed and put a little fence around it. (You’re thinking “she’s closer to imbecile than moron.”) That next winter, I planted another round of beautiful lettuces. Same outcome, took less than a week. Now I’m angry. I went to the hardware store and bought chicken wire and crafted a cage for the lettuces — which are by now the most expensive greens in California. Made a small door I could open (with difficulty and some bleeding) to harvest my crop.

What crop? Within a day or two of my construction project and before my cuts healed, same result.

OKAY…THIS MEANS WAR!

My husband, who had been muttering something that may have sounded like “rat traps” for over a year, again offered his services. By this time, I no longer objected on the grounds that it’s inhumane. Instant death by guillotine for those little f**kers sounded perfect.

He set up several traps and calmly announced the first morning after that he had caught two and already disposed of them, and that my new lettuces were undisturbed. My hero!

Over the next week he caught a couple more and then all quiet. His theory was that the “scouts” did not return, and the group got the message to avoid that murderer’s yard! Clearly, they are reading my Nextdoor feed.

Fast forward to this week and my horrifying discovery when I opened the closet in my guest house. Yup, you guessed it — a rat dropping. After I finished screaming to an empty room in an empty guest house, my husband set a trap where the dropping was. Simultaneously I called pest control. This was no longer a job for amateurs. I needed SWAT-style back up.

The company responded to my near hysteria with “We have a special rat guy, Reuben. He’ll solve your problem.” Yes, I needed special forces, THAT was the answer.

When Reuben arrived the next morning, he asked the most bizarre question as he looked at our trap: “Is that peanut butter in the trap organic?” Wait, WHHAAAT?? I looked at him like one of us had lost their minds and this time it wasn’t me. He added “They won’t eat that organic crap.” Good news for Reuben, neither will I.  

The next thing I knew Reuben was on the roof of my guest house. Soon he knocked on my door and when I answered, he had the look of someone who had just slayed a dragon. Which he had.

“I found where he (gender noted) is getting in! Come with me!” I followed him and he excitedly showed me a tiny hole near the foundation of the guest house, then trotted, with his finger pointing, along “the route,” and finally triumphantly showed me the inside landing place. He pointed to rat droppings that were too high for me to see as proof of his detective work.

Now I’m impressed. He was totally smug as he told me the — not minor — cost of his services over the next couple of hours to rodent-proof the guest house. Worth every penny.

As he left, he told me that rats are all over the city, everywhere. Apparently, the Big Apple has nothing on Los Angeles. Every yard has them and yes, they often get into houses. That revelation took care of my embarrassment about the whole situation. Never mind rodent-proof, he has an everything-proof business. Apparently, we all live in rat-infested cities. How reassuring.

One of our friends, to whom I treated this entire story in long form, lives 50 miles from us out in the country on a large property with its own zoo: horses, cats, dogs, tortoise, a bird or two. His smart-ass response when I told him the rat saga was “For heaven’s sake, Renee — get a cat. I’ll give you one of mine.”

— Renee Burns Lonner 

Renee Burns Lonner is a consultant for television newsrooms and a licensed psychotherapist based in Los Angeles. Her published work has appeared in many professional publications. During the pandemic she shifted to humor writing, and her work has been published by Medium, LOL Comedy and the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop blog. In 2021, she published her first humor book If You Give a Man a Tesla: A Parody and she is currently working on a second humor book to be published in time for the 2024 holiday season.  Spoiler alert: the second book has nothing to do with cars and everything to do with one of life’s major milestones.