PRTSD

Post Rat Traumatic Stress Disorder

We definitely have this. After the events captured here and here , it is taking us a little while to adjust to the new normal; that is with no rat scrambling around in the walls, chewing on valuable construction components of our house and making Riley do this for untold hours each day:

One of the main problems is that Riley has not stopped engaging in gratuitous staring at various spots where he heard scratching and chewing on previous occasions. It might help to you put this in perspective if you know that once last summer, while I was making hamburgers, I dropped a lump of ground beef on the kitchen floor. Riley happened to be in the vicinity and swooped in to take care of the problem. And while that happened a good 6 months ago, he still checks the exact spot on the kitchen floor multiple times each day, on the off chance another magical lump of ground beef has appeared there. So if it is not terribly alarming to see him staring at the wall, it can for just a second, give one pause and tempt you to listen along with him.

No house is silent and while ours is fairly new and not subject to the creaks and groans an old house might give out, it does react to wind and tempurature changes of the kind that are particularly prominent this week. Every noise, no matter how minute, makes us stop what we are doing and listen. If we had as little self control as Riley does, I am pretty sure we would be over next to him, staring at the wall.

But in reality, 8 days post-rat we are not hearing anything to indicate that he had any friends or relatives in residence with him at the time of his demise. We are living a carefree and more importantly, rat-free existance.

It is a wonderful thing.