There is a RAT!

It's currently 4:41 am in Azerbaijan. At 4:18 am I woke up to some noises in my apartment coming from the kitchen. I live alone and was certain, CERTAIN, someone had broken in. One might ask what I chose to do about it, well, my answer was to get up and start turning on lights (in retrospect, if someone had been in my house, this may have been a poor handling of the situation).

I kept turning on lights. I turned on the kitchen light (once I had established there was not anyone in the apartment). And there. Was. A. RAT!

A Rat.

A RAT!

I stared at it. It stared at me. It scurried (kind of a slow scurry) and dropped into the sink. And then onto a pipe. Then it just kind of hung out there. Then it lept, LEPT from the pipe onto the counter. I've currently lost sight of it (I was observing all of this from my light switch stance). I closed the door to the kitchen. I stood there for a few minutes. (It's a glass door and I can see through it.) I'm now here, writing this post. (Did I mention there is a rat? There's a RAT!)

I'm in uncharted territory here. What am I supposed to do? I mean, the other day there was a huge moth (it was beheMOTH) in my house and my solution was to get a jar and capture it and let it outside, but a rat?

While standing at my light switch position, I remembered one of my students telling me about my particular apartment building. In his sophomore year of college, he had lived on the first floor of this very building. He told me when I moved out of my host family's house and into my new location that there were a lot of mice in that building. Yes, apparently, he had problems with "mice" while he lived here.

I'm kind of wondering if maybe he confused "mice" with "rat" (non-native speaker, English learner, I'm thinking the possibility is pretty good here).

I have a rat. It's just hanging out in my kitchen right now. (Luckily, in the closing of the door, I have now at least reassured myself that it's not going to leap onto my face at any moment. This is always a worry with animals, that somehow they will leap onto one's face and attach in a fashion similar to the Body Snatchers alien. I blame this on too many slapstick comedies where animals are leaping onto faces. Wasn't there a raccoon like that in some movie?)

Those of you reading this and thinking, "She has a rat and she's posting a blog instead of taking care of it?!" Then, admittedly, you have a valid point. However, I'm really at a loss here. I don't have the right type of equipment or face mask for this sort of thing (the leaping, let's not forget about the leaping). How did it get in? Does it have friends? If it doesn't have friends, does that mean it someday will have friends?

Also, Remy, this rat is not. That rat was clever and he could cook, this guy? Well, I don't really know if he can cook. I suppose I could ask him, he is (I think) in the kitchen.

It's 5:06 am. I'm tired. I'm kind of freaked out. I Googled how to get rid of rats and thank you King County, if I wasn't freaked out enough. Really? Rats in TOILETS. I may never pee again.

I'm sure this will later be a comical "Peace Corps story." Haha, "Remember that time there was a rat?" Yeah, well. For now, I still have the rat.

So. Now what?

(Click here for a rat update.)

Author's note: I am a compulsive cleaner. Please don't take this rat's presence as an indicator of food mess. My kitchen is pretty spotless. It is, however, part of life in a building where there is a "garbage shoot" and a room which houses trash two floors below me.