Not the best thing to find in the air conditioner.
So last Saturday morning at 5:45 Boy #1 comes walking in, wakes me up and says, “Uh, dad. There’s a rat in the air conditioner.”
“No there’s not—the A/C just makes noise.”
“Uh, I think it’s a rat.”
“No, it’s just the water draining. Go back to bed.”
Boy #1 leaves the room in his undies, shaking his head.
(5 minutes later) “Dad, there’s definitely a rat in the air conditioner. I saw a hand.”
“You saw a hand?”
“And an eyeball. A red one.”
“An eyeball? Okay, let’s check it out.”
Sure enough, I stumble into his room and see a big friggin’ rat running through the tube in the air conditioner. Like a hamster on a wheel. Somehow it got in from the roof and then jumped inside the tube that was placed in the window without any skill. Nasty.
The rat wasn’t going anywhere so I closed the door and it finally worked itself out after many attempts. But it didn’t make cleaning that thing later in the day any easier. All I could think of was opening the A/C up and having a big, nasty rat jumping out at me and lock on to my face like an Ace Ventura movie.
The lesson in this little story? Listen a little closer to your kids the first time.
—Photo surprise truck/Flickr