"Mouse" in the Pantry

Christian has been crawling for a little over a month now and finds all manner of things to entertain himself. It is great. He gets into everything from the trash in the bathroom, to Cohen's prized toys ("No, Christian! MINE!!") to the cupboards with the dishes. Although it is time consuming to walk around the house picking up after him, I figure the trade-off is worth it: He spends 15 fun-packed minutes playing and I spend two cleaning up! One of Cohen's favorite places to play is the pantry...and the other day he left the door open and Christian snuck by me and crawled in. I heard some rustling inside and went to inspect and here is what I found:


Speaking of rodents...We do actually have somewhat of an issue with large rats here. Thankfully they are not IN the house--but they run around quite confidently in our yard without any apparent fear of humans. We share our yard with three other tenants and their domestic employees and the families of the domestic employees and the security guards--all of whom have their own little space out back. Point being, we cannot control the hygiene and trash habits of all the people we share our yard with and hence continue to learn to just "deal" with the creatures.

For example, when Cohen and Christian and I are out on the grass playing and a rat comes running straight at us I stand up and yell loudly shouting my disgust (I've found this to be quite effective! It typically scurries away, undoubtedly with it's feelings hurt). Cohen, however, hasn't quite figured out what to make of them. We have been teaching him to be respectful of animals and trying to get him over his fear of dogs....so apparently he thought the same rules applied here. The other day when I rat was running around us, he looked up at me, opened his arms and asked me, "Mommy? Give "wat" hug?" I'm afraid my shock and horror were so great I may have yelled "No!" a little too vehemently! Poor boy. It's got to be confusing. Why do Mommy and Daddy teach him to pet and hug puppies and not the large furry animals in our own yard? Hmmm....