From the moment my brother invited me to visit him on the north shore of Oahu, all I could think about was the fragrance of Hibiscus wafting through the evening air, miles of white sand beaches, steel guitar and ukulele music and papayas growing in the front yard. What I hadn’t thought about were the rats.
Besides being home to quaint Waikiki, the Polynesian Cultural Center, outrigger canoe rides and bronzed girls in grass skirts, Oahu is famous for its nightlife: 7 varieties of Geckos, 17 species of amphibians, dozens of poisonous lizards, snakes, spiders, frogs, toads, centipedes and the biggest rats known to man. Rats that carry fatal diseases like the plague, murine typhus, leptospirosis, and salmonellosis. Rats that can eat through linoleum floors faster than a cordless Makita.
My brother’s house was in the country, on the point of Waimea Bay – literally a toad’s throw from the water and the jungle they call home. Built in the early 1940s, none of the windows really shut. It was riddled with spaces between the clapboard siding, giving amphibious visitors unbridled access to the inside of his home. Tourists staying in Waikiki never learn about this elusive slice of Hawaiian life because modern high-rise hotels are sealed tighter than a Wahine’s pink canoe and constantly patrolled by exterminators.
The morning following my arrival, I learned my first lesson about living in the Hawaiian countryside: never leave dirty dishes in the sink until morning. We had partied well into the wee hours of the night and were far too inebriated to even think about kitchen work, so I left a lasagna pan soaking in the sink, thinking I’d deal with it in the morning. As I lumbered into the kitchen, I was greeted by a family of Orange-spotted Geckos that had set up camp on the kitchen counter. They wanted to stay clear of the giant centipedes and 3-inch banana spiders getting their first taste of Italian food. Fortunately, they were as surprised to see me as I was to see them, so they dashed out a crack in the corner of the kitchen to tell all their neighbors there was a new chef in town. They’d be back tonight.
Then, I met the Cane toads. During the rainy season, Cane toads move from fields and sewer pipes to the damp, darkness underneath the houses dotting the north shore. About the size of a child’s softball mitt, they slept under our house during the day. When the sun went down, they came out by the hundreds, looking for bugs on our front lawn. Urban legend has it that Cane toads ooze toxic secretions from their necks when they feel threatened. If you handle them correctly, you can lick or smoke the secretions for a cheap hallucinogenic high. I wasn’t aware of this when I accidentally stepped on the back of one, otherwise I would have tried giving him a cheap hickie instead of throwing a loaded ice chest at him before I sprinted back inside. It’s hard to say who was more surprised – him or me. I do know who jumped the highest and promised himself never to walk outside after sunset without wearing ski boots.
With several valuable lessons under my belt about country living, I settled in for an extended stay and got ready to surf some of the best beaches in the world – until the scratching began.
My brother and I each had a bedroom in a two-bedroom house. Sharing a common bathroom, each bedroom was off to the side and had a door we closed at night for privacy. It also turned out to be effective rodent control.
One evening while dozing off to sleep, I was awoken by loud scratching sounds on the linoleum floor – like the sounds your chemistry professor used to make on the blackboard while balancing chemical equations. With both doors to the bathroom shut, it was obvious that a hairy interloper had found an alternative way into the bathroom from underneath the house, scratched around the room, then left the same way he came in.
I felt immediate relief after calling my brother’s landlord – he knew exactly what the sound was and how to get rid of it. “You’ve got Norway rats that have burrowed into your bathroom,” he said. “They bore through the floorboards in search of sugar cane, macadamia nuts, coffee, papaya and bananas.” I assured him that we didn’t keep any of those in the bathroom, but argued that they could have been attracted by the scent of toothpaste, deodorant and English Leather. They enticed the women I dated, so why shouldn’t they work on a Norway rat? Then he added, “They’re also motivated by thirst, hunger, sex, maternal instinct, and curiosity” – all the things that appeal to teen-aged boys – so I knew they weren’t after coffee and bananas. “Go down and talk to Kimo at Haweiwa Hardware,” he said. “He’ll get rid of your rats.”
Kimo had lived on the north shore his entire life and knew everything there was to know about getting rid of nasty Norwegians – at least the rodent types. “The best way to get rid of Norway rats is by trapping them,” he said, as he pulled out a mouse trap that could have stopped a bear. It measured 24 inches long and took two of us to cock it. “The rats go for a slices of kosher hot dogs, dried papaya or mango, hickory-smoked bacon, organic peanut butter, Godiva chocolates and Margarita Jelly Bellies,” so that ran me another $200 dollars in bait. Evidently, rats have refined their tastes from Velveeta cheese.
That afternoon, my brother and I carefully baited the bathroom with 5 or 6 traps set with a lethal combination of hot dogs, bacon, peanut butter and candy. We figured if they didn’t get caught in the trap, they’d eventually succumb to a heart attack from all the cholesterol they were eating. Just to be thorough, we left a cassette player running with Don Ho singing “Tiny Bubbles,” thinking it would curdle their blood. Then, we closed the bathroom doors and went to bed.
About one o’clock in the morning, I was woken by the usual scratching sound, followed by a loud “SNAP!” Ten minutes later, our Scandinavian visitor had kicked the rodent bucket.
Both of us knew we had reeled in our first Norwegian Brown. The problem was, neither one of us wanted to deal with a dead rat with a squashed neck and eyeballs popping out of his head. My brother needed to take a shower and get to work, so taking immediate command of the situation, he covered the dead vermin with a brown grocery bag, leaving it for me to deal with when my full bladder finally forced me into the bathroom. It didn’t work. I climbed out a widow to pee and used the garden hose to brush my teeth, leaving Sven for my brother when he got home from the office.
Despite all our efforts at keeping the rats at bay, they managed to find ways into the bathroom, kitchen and dining room while we hunkered down under the covers, waiting for them to leave. After two weeks, the Norwegian rats won. I abandoned the hunting expedition and headed back to California, letting my brother deal with our hairy visitors. After all… it was his house.
