Boat’s loathsome stowaway turns naturalist into trapper

One of my greatest joys is sharing my boat with awesome animals. Dolphins play in Honu’s bow wave, seabirds perch in the rigging, and at night, light-making organisms reveal twinkling trails of fish on the go.

Still, as much as I respect living creatures and acknowledge all animals’ right to exist, not all are welcome on my boat.

Last week as I prepared to leave Honu in a lovely Mexican marina, I stopped packing to listen to the unusually loud crackling of snapping shrimp. These bottom-dwelling, inch-long crustaceans have one large claw that snaps shut with a bang. The sound travels well through water and boat hulls, and in the tropics, including Hawaii, the shrimp sound like a dozen popcorn poppers all going at once.

For a moment I thought I heard among the snap-crackle-pops a scratch-scrabble-gnaw, but I convinced myself I imagined it. But that night, after the shrimp and I went to bed, the sound of tiny scurrying feet woke me.

In the morning I found rice bags ripped, cracker boxes torn and a cardboard canister dribbling parmesan cheese. Honu had a rat.

A rat is always bad news on a boat, but this time was worse than usual. In only three days I was to lock her up and fly home. If I sealed a rat inside, Honu’s interior would soon become a mess of severed wires, chewed plastic and scored teak.

I rushed to the store, which offered only adhesive traps, which I never use because of the panic and suffering they cause the animal. But I was feeling some panic and suffering myself. The holidays were approaching and I was homesick.

My aversion to gluing a rat to death turned out to be irrelevant, because this Einstein of rodents also had an aversion to those traps. The rat ate the bait at the center of the platforms by leaning over the edges without touching the sticky stuff.

The next day I bought two spring-loaded traps and proceeded to snap my fingers black and blue in setting them. Einstein, though, managed to spring one trap, eat the peanut butter and walk away unharmed. The rascal avoided the second one and instead chewed up the macrame string of my treasured fossilized coral necklace from Baja’s mountain range, Sierra Gigantica.

Chemical warfare was my last option. Rat poison, however, isn’t as prevalent in the La Paz stores as it is here, and I had to tramp through the city for hours searching. The stuff I finally found was so dangerous to humans that my expert rat eradication friend advised me not to use it. Back to the streets.

That afternoon I found some safe, recommended poison. Because my flight was the next day, I put it out in a dozen places.

That night, two of the lethal baits disappeared, and the scratching of little feet ceased. But even dead, the rat had the last laugh. I tore the boat apart but could not find the carcass.

It seems wrong to spend so much time and money admiring animals, only to kill the ones that bother me. But that’s the trouble with rats. They’re awesome and awful at the same time. The best I can do is thank the rat for eating the poison so I could leave on time. It’s great to be home.

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Reach Susan Scott at www.susanscott.net.