Goldberg: Of unknown origin

By Tod Goldberg

Several years ago, there was a film starring Peter Weller called Of Unknown Origin. Weller played a yuppie with a hot wife (former Playmate Shannon Tweed) who becomes obsessed with an infestation of rats in his suburban townhouse. Toward the end of the film, Tweed leaves Weller and the rats press Weller into a homicidal madness. He stalks about his home carrying a baseball bat filled with protruding nails, screws and saw blades, alternately pounding out walls and accidentally impaling himself, all in the name of his nemesis. Man defeats beast in the end, and while it ain't exactly Truffaut, I'm happy to say the film has always held a place in my heart. A place I now see all too clearly.

For the past 10 days, I have been besieged by vermin. It started with a scratching sound in the ceiling.

"Uh, honey," I said on the first day, "I think the rats are back."

"What do you want me to do about it?" my wife said.

"Well, uh, I'm just concerned that I might get the Hantavirus, and I know you don't want me to get that, because, yeah, that's a really debilitating thing to have, I mean, like, you die and stuff. Or you get poisoned and have to go see that Dr. Venom dude from the TV and you know how all the people on that show look like they got rolled over by their own trailer, and you don't want that, do you, honey? I mean, yeah, that would be a bad way to go and..."

"Tod," my wife said, "stop. You're rambling like some idiot. What is the nature of your problem, exactly?"

"I'm scared of the rats. I'm afraid I'll wake up and they'll be eating my eyes."

"What about this Hantavirus?"

"That too."

"Then get some traps. It worked last time."

Last time was, according to my mental Rolodex, about a year ago. During that rat invasion, my friend Jim lived in our guest room whilst awaiting his move back to Portland to reopen his strip club. Since he had an empty dance card, at night he'd humor himself by trying to squash rats as they fell out of our palm tree. He used a variety of different instruments, each failing as miserably as the next: plastic garbage cans (not heavy enough), aluminum bats (when you miss, he learned the vibration off the cement hurts; he always missed) and softballs (by nature, just too soft). Finally, we went to Lowe's and purchased a number of your basic rat traps and placed them around the roof and along a pony wall separating my house from the neighbor's. Over the course of a few days, we caught three rats and declared an end to the major fighting.

The problem was that this time I was fairly certain that a few traps wouldn't handle the problem. I'd noticed that our dog had taken to staring at the ceiling and growling in a low, ominous way, as if her territory was somehow being invaded...sort of like she does when someone tries to take her food. What I really wanted was for my wife to call the exterminator, pony up the three bills for a professional assassination, and let the fear end. Instead, I dutifully went off to Lowe's and purchased traps and placed them around the perimeter of the house at dusk.

"I did the deed," I told my wife.

"Uh huh."

"TCOB, baby, TCOB," I said.

"What?"

"Taking. Care. Of. Business," I said.

"Why don't you go play a video game?" she said.

That night, as I sat in the living room and watched "Lost" and wondered just how long it would be until they forced the fat guy to lose some weight, I made my first kill. Outside, I found that I'd actually killed three rats, one in each trap. I felt...powerful. I felt...proud. I felt...a little sick to my stomach. Why did I let cute little bunnies come into my yard? Why did I let the roadrunner? Why did I have a dog that kisses me on the mouth? I wasn't sure, but I knew that the killing made me feel something vaguely Republican and I liked that.

Since then, I've killed at least a rat a day. When I wake up, I immediately go outside to inspect the traps, morning wood be damned, and have become adept at dealing with all sorts of viscera. A little brain matter first thing in the morning gets the heart pumping, I say.

"This is getting out of hand," my wife said today. "I think you're actually luring rats in now."

"That's crazy," I said, but the thought had crossed my mind, especially after I figured out the rats were more prone to hit the traps with the Trader Joe's peanut butter than the normal Peter Pan.

"I'm going to call an exterminator," she said.

"I can do this. I can handle this. I've got this situation under control."

"Which is why I'm calling the exterminator."

If only I had a bat covered in saw blades and peanut butter, I thought, I could convince her differently. There's always next time.