The rats are not doing well, and I want them to do worse. Ten days rain: Harold’s bin of 
chicken grain across the road tight in its tin can, the duck grain & goose grain gone & tucked 
under the house, unattainable. None of the neighbors chucking kitchen-scraps out the windows 
anymore, no fruit in the trees, no nuts. Leaflessness, no grass seed, no dead deer, just deluge: 
water off the hills, rivulets on the slightest slope; meadows recall their lakes. Wet nights for the 
rats, wet nights.
	I want them to shrivel, stumble, starve. Prolific in the attic, I want them desperate for the 
peanut butter on the ten traps I set—traps that smell of old death—let them smell that death but 
be hungry, hasty, and let each trap snap & snap well—slice a neck, crack a skull, flip & sink 
them into insulation, stinking in dead rat silence.
	Because I hate their entry, which I can’t find, I have caulked & filled, found each hole 
larger than a dime, stuffed coarse steel wool, cut screen, nailed it in, gone up the extension ladder 
& down, reshingled, soffited, and still they get in.
	Because I hate their acrobatics, clawing across the rafters, gnawing the soft joists smooth, 
rolling their goddamn acorns across the false ceiling or squealing as they’re screwing, I see every 
one of their beady eyes from our bed.
	Because I hate the smell of their sweet piss in the attic—unmistakable—on summer days 
it rises through the vents, rides the breeze.
	Because I have tried poison, which they take, seek water, sway across the fields toward 
the creek, speared by an owl, now the owl’s poisoned, so I poison no more. 
	Because they are huge. Because they are healthy—the one who flipped down from the 
attic last week, dead from the trap, his coat shining, lamp-black & gray, lovely.