TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

I walked into the garage around sunset in order to feed the dogs and when I turned on the light, a rat scampered across the beam.

A rat or rats, I'm not sure because when I first looked, the rat seemed to be medium-sized and when I blinked, hoping I hadn't see what I had seen, the rat appeared to have experienced dietary success and shrunk from a medium to a small.

My first thought was this: A rat either in singular or plural form is a captivating thing to behold in the wild, or even in the tame expanse of one's garage, familiar though it is with the gray metal work bench, a red four-drawer toolbox, and bikes hanging from the hooks screwed into beams -- much like the one the rat or rats had scampered over.

It was like love, but the opposite. My heart skipped a beat. Then two.

My second thought was this: Were there any circumstances under which I might think a rat cute? Given children's books and cartoons, their faces could almost be called cunning. No, the problem rests with their tails. The tails are longer than you want them to be and for what purpose, it's hard to figure. The tails look as lethal as a lasso and one could imagine rats launching them toward their prey and attaching to an ear or an unclenched hand.

Framed by the sudden turning on of lights and the rats hightailing it for parts unknown, what made the scene both strange and familiar was that Poco, the blind dog, was lying on her doggie bed asleep, unaware of the rat or rats that scampered no more than 10 feet over her head.

Poco has her charms, but this is where a blind dog hurts you. That rat could have performed wheelies on a small bicycle inches from Poco's nose, and Poco would neither have applauded nor been moved to pull down the curtain.

Over the fence the next day, I spotted my neighbor Martha and reported on the rats I had seen the day before. I suppose it is a given, and even an odd point of geographical pride, that downtown neighborhoods have rats, so Martha was not surprised to hear there had been a sighting.

"My cat kills one a day," she said, indicating either that she had an extraordinary cat or that we had an extraordinary rat problem.

One rat a day. That's some cat. However, given that one rat a day didn't seem to be making a dent in the population, could we coax Martha's cat to add a morning session as well as an evening?

We have a cat too, but it has been years since Callie had left a present on our front door. This is where an 18-year-old cat hurts you. Callie had made peace with both rats and birds.

I found myself a knight with no armor and a dull sword. We had a blind chocolate Lab that didn't hear well either and a mature tabby cat on the home stretch.

Martha's chicken, Mabel, had a better chance of cornering a rat than Poco or Callie.

Meanwhile, I poured the dog food into a large gray plastic trash can and secured the top by placing a silver 10-gallon weight on it. A couple of mornings later, I walked into the garage and was jarred by the sight of the lid tilted to one side and the weight resting on the chair.

Were these rats related to black bears? I replayed events from the night before and remembered that I had fed the dogs after two generous glasses of red wine and may have forgotten to snug the lid tight and replace the weight on top of the lid.

It was time to join the fight rather than to analyze or anthropomorphize these small creatures. I called Kern Mosquito & Vector Control. They were busy, and the rat techs were in the field. These were fellow soldiers who would provide bait stations rather than traps. I will be interested in meeting the neighborhood.

These are Herb Benham's opinions, not necessarily those of The Californian.