Animals gone nuts!

Boyfriend Jon, heretoafter referred to as Typhoid Jon in this post, got me sick. I know i should have seen it coming but i still didn't avoid the plague boy as i should have. Nope, my instincts kicked in and i took care of him.

Starting Tuesday, my throat decided to be uncomfortably raw, then my nose revolted by blocking airflow. Next thing i know, I'm laying in bed with no covers cause i'm boiling hot. Then i'm freezing to the point where i have a sheet, a comforter and a down comforter and i'm still shivering. By morning, i was calling in sick and stayed home  sleeping until 11am. At some point, i decided that i needed to go look in my outdoor patio closet for something.

I unlocked the door and pulled it open and was scared half to death by a dark brown rat jumping from one box to another. After doing the normal thing by screaming and looking around for a chair to stand on and calling Typhoid Jon to...well i have no idea why i called him other than to have someone sympathize with me...I finally got a hold of myself.

I'm not scared of rats. Granted, they are disease filled scavenger varmints, but i played with the pet versions and exterminated the non pet versions. We had a large nest of grain rats in our woodpile for a couple of years and dad put me in charge of trapping them. And when in the unfortunate circumstances the trap didn't actually kill them instantly, i tried to make it clean and quick. It was definitively my least favorite of all the oddball chores i was assigned, but I got the job done.

I think the scream (if you can call it that through my hoarse voicebox) was more out of surprise than any actual fear. Finally, i grabbed the stick i wedge my door shut with and started cleaning out my closet. The rat managed to escape with its life, but the nest i think it was starting to build in my christmas decorations did not survive the purge. I found rat poop and pee all over my stuff which thankfully was in plastic containers. The only cloth item, my suitcase, seems to have managed to remain unscathed.

Since i was sick, it took me over an hour to get everything out of my closet, which normally would have taken me ten minutes. Given that i was home and it was a relatively nice day, i left everything out on my patio while i washed off the rat poop and pee. Then i got interrupted by a phone call from my backup at work, asking a few questions. I sat down on my couch to talk. That's when i noticed my Kitchen Aid box tilt alarmingly to the left and return to its normal position. As i watched, it did it again!

I told my backup that i needed to go, and rushed out onto my patio thinking that i had missed something or the rat was back. Nope, this is what i saw:

It was HUGE, probably one of the largest coons I've seen in a while standing not even five feet from me with only my stuff between us. It looked up at me like "Oh what? is this your stuff? Well do you have any food?" and didn't budge. I screamed at it, waved my hands, and banged on one of the tubs with my stick. Then i grabbed my broom and poked towards it. The look it gave me clearly said "oh please, you don't think i'm gonna give up that easily do you? What about over here? any food here?" as it reached for the kitchen aid box again.

I picked up a bottle of windex i had nearby and hucked it at his head. It hit him, but he started playing with the bottle instead of taking it as a threatening gesture. Finally, i got fed up. I quickly found my blow gun and loaded a non lethal plastic stun dart in it. The last thing i wanted to do that day was clean up a coon carcass. The coon retreated a few steps when the first dart hit him, but it took NINE direct hits with the stun darts for him to finally give up and sauntered into the woods.

By this point, i had a headache, my sinuses were killing me, i was coughing up a storm and sweating profusely.  Still i managed to rushingly shove everything back in the closet and wedge a box in the back of where the door would close hopefully deterring the rat somewhat. I called my dad and asked for his help putting shelves in my closet to get my stuff up off the floor.

Mercifully after that, i sank into my couch and quickly gave into oblivion for a while.

Hang on...nope...i'm not done yet. The menagerie continues if you can believe that.

The next day a robin decided it didn't like my freshly cleaned windows and began attacking them leaving poop, feathers and smudge marks all over them.

And as evening fell, the rat returned though i managed to see it before it got into my closet and threw a block of wood at it to scare it off.

Why won't the animals just let me be sick in peace?