A Rude Interruption

     I was baking cookies a few minutes ago, sitting at the kitchen table doing the crossword while they baked. All of a sudden I heard scratching noises coming from the direction of the oven and pantry--noises like the ones my cat makes when she's trapped in a room and believes her air supply to be quickly depleting. Taffy had heard them too, and she was crouched next to the pantry door with her ears in full upright position, not unlike an airplane tray table during takeoff and landing.
     I stood for a few moments with my ear to the door to make certain that the pantry was the source of the sounds. When I was sure, I did what any grown ass feminist in my position would do: I went to look for my dad.
     "Daddy," I said calmly and sweetly, "I believe there is something in the pantry. Living. There is something living in the pantry."
     He got up and surveyed the situation. "How should I get it out?" he asked. The words of a true manly man.
     "Go get the trap!" I suggested. (You may recall from previous posts that my brother set a live trap in our yard near the compost pile to catch rats.) "You can open the door a crack and then snap the trap shut when he's in it!" In case it's not abundantly clear from this statement, I don't think well on my feet.
     After a minute or so of thought, my dad reached his own (equally ridiculous) conclusion. "I'm just going to open the door," he said.
     "Open the door?" I asked, incredulous. "You're going to open the door and let a rat into the house." It was more a statement than a question.
     "Do you have a better idea?" my dad asked.
     "Yeah," I said. "Don't."
     "I need to open the door," he persisted.
     "Get a broom!" my mom shouted from my parents' room.
     And precisely where do you think the broom was located? Oh yes. The pantry.
     "You're just going to let a rat run around the house?" I asked.
     My dad nodded. "Until it disappears somewhere." Because that makes sense.
     My mom's concern? "Just let me close our door first!"
    Despite my desperate attempts to prevent my dad from releasing a filthy rodent--a rodent possibly carrying some rare and untreatable communicable disease--into the place in which we live, my dad was firm. He did, however, arm himself with a backup broom he retrieved from the shed.
     "Okay," he said, "I'm gonna do it."
     I climbed onto the counter and held my breath as he inched toward the door.
     "Wait!" I shouted. "My cookies!"
     My dad shot me a look that said "You've got to be kidding me!"
     "They're going to burn!" I said, and pulled the baking sheet from the oven.
     By then the scratching had stopped. I climbed back up onto the counter and my dad, convinced that the rat was actually gnawing at the wood in the crawl space underneath the pantry, slowly slid the door open.
     Nothing.
     "It probably just retreated to its dark pantry lair," I suggested.
     My dad shook his head. "No, he's not in here. He's down below."
     "Are you sure?"
     "Pretty sure. Almost sure."
     From behind my parents' closed bedroom door my mom shouted, "Did you get it?"
     "Dad's only slightly sure there's nothing there!" I shouted back.
     "I'm pretty sure," he corrected.
     "He's pretty sure!" I yelled. "He's only partially positive that there's not a rodent in our house!"
     "No," he said, "it's not in here. It's definitely in the crawl space."
     And, like a good daughter, I told him I believed him.
     I'll be taking my cat with me the next time I need a snack.