It shouldn't surprise me.  At the house in Eugina he hid under a blanket while I chased a bat out the back door with a broom and a bucket.  I kill the spiders.  I unclog the drains.  I take out the garbage.  When I picked him up at work and told him about the rat the size of a cat that jumped out of the garbage can and scrambled through the house to hide beneath the hutch at the entry he was disgusted.  "Well, were going to have to deal with that."  Meaning I'm going to have to deal with that.

We're on the couch, watching a mindless sitcom, laughing over nighttime tea and oreos.  There's a rustle in the kitchen cabinet.  We both stiffen.  It's back.  Rustle...rustle...SNAP - like a pop gun.  The Better RODENTRAP by intruder™.  It's a heavy-duty, grey, plastic pitfall of death.  There's a frantic scramble from within the coffin of the sink cabinet.  Pitiful squeals.  Sharp little talons struggling for purchase on the formica cupboard lining, trap banging against the back wall in one futile fight against inevitable assassination.

And then it's over.  The death dance is complete.  We stare at each other.  Each willing the other to act.  Each feeling the fingers of revulsion tickling along our spines.  Neither moving.  Oreos sitting like so much sand on our tongues.  Defiant.  Disgusted.  Disheartened.

I wait two hours.  Foolishly thinking he will step up.  He does not.  Of course.

I don my pretty pink rubber gloves - trying to put a little happily-ever-after into a task void of sunshine.  He is in full rigor.  Surrounded in the coffee grinds he managed to free from the garbage before succumbing to my prowess.  Like he was digging his own grave in a pile of Folgers Classic Roast.  I disengage the trap and he falls into the garbage bag without ceremony, nestling among slimy yogurt cups and shriveled spinach.  I remove the bag to the can on the deck where weather will petrify and garbage man will soon relocate far from my presence.

I return to his smug grin, slightly traumatized, acutely annoyed.  "How's it feel to know I'm more of a man than you are?"

All he does is laugh.

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