Apparently I am listening to an archived show, 'cause when I called in, they said THIS IS AN ARCHIVED SHOW! About a guy killing a rat in the car by putting a hose from the tailpipe into the window! Then you guys went on to say that rays are scarey bc you think they’ll crawl up your pant leg but do they EVER do that? I am here to tell you they UNEQUIVOCALLY DO crawl up your pant leg and it is as scarey as hell when they do. LMK if you want the whole story! I gotta go to Tai Chi class right now.
Mich–They are ALL archived shows at this point.
In the show they asked - will a rat go up your pants leg?
Answer: Yes, if you are dumb enough to step on a rat’s tail to keep the rat from escaping.
I had a lab job where they did medical research, and the primary test animals were rats.
The white ones were docile. The brown ones were ornery. Only once, a white one
jumped out of the cage when I went to do something in the cage. It was getting away,
so I stepped on it’s tail. It went right up my pants leg. I stepped into an empty lab
room ( no female co-workers there ), and retrieved the rat.
As the rat was white and docile and young ( no experiments done on it yet ), it
didn’t bite me.
I would NEVER step on a rat’s tail to keep it from getting away ever again.
A lab rat is pretty tame. A wild rat would just as soon byte you as not. So it
is not the same case, but avoid having one go up your pants leg. Don’t step
on it’s tail.
I can remember looking as the rat went up my pants leg and thinking “boy, that
was a really dumb move”.
my dad taught me to tuck my pants in my socks when around rats. seemed like good advice at the time. the floor of a chicken house at night is creepy. its like a rat party. hundreds of em, fighting , frolicking, end eatin’ chicken. I never went back at night.
Dear Tom and Ray,
Forget about resting easy. Given the opportunity and the lack of reasonable alternatives, a rat will indeed run up you pants leg.
I know this because I have felt the scampering of little feet up the inside of my Levis. As it turned out, all the way up.
The occasion was a family reunion at my grandparent’s house, where the presence of a rodent in the living room was not to be tolerated. After clearing all the women folk from the room, the men went on the hunt, eventually stalking the intruder under an upholstered chair, the kind with the pleated skirt around the bottom. It was my duty to lift the chair while the rest of the menfolk waited with baseball bats, boards, and yard implements, ready to bludgeon the little guy into a stain on the rug. As soon as I lifted the chair, the rat sized up the situation and chose the flare of my hippie bell bottoms – this was the early 70’s – as his next haven. So focused was I on the subtle new pressure in my pants that I neglected to respond to comments like, “I didn’t see it,” and “Did it go under the cushion?” Every time I shifted my weight to handle the chair, the pressure went further up the stovepipe. I finally managed to respond to my uncle’s question “Well, where’d it go?” by saying, “I got bad news about that.” I set the chair down, and when I straightened up, the little guy scampered all the way up to the north side of my right buttock, where the memory of his touch is still as fresh 42 years later as it was the next morning. My father, ever ready to help me out of trouble, rose to the occasion and grabbed the lump, squeezing until we could hear the eyeballs pop and the bones crack.
When it was ascertained that, based on the best evidence we had, I had not been bitten or scratched, the next problem was to figure out how to get him out of there in the presence of 40 family members. With my Dad still holding onto the corpse through my jeans, I waddled out to the front porch, where after explaining our peculiar binding, we excused the women folk again. Under cover of darkness, I was relieved of my pants and my furry cargo, and a new legend entered our family lore.
So if you want to rest easy, keep your pants tucked into your boots. Your fear awaits you under every overstuffed chair.
Dear Tom & Ray,
On a recent show, you shared a story from a police blotter about someone who was trying to fumigate a rat residing in his or her car by running a hose from the exhaust into the car window. You questioned whether a rat would really run up your pant leg. Well, I can tell you from personal experience, the answer is “yes, it will!”
About 15 years ago while working in a research lab at the medical school, one of our research rats had escaped from its container and was living behind the cabinets in the lab. As I walked into the lab room after lunch a few days later, one of my coworkers screamed at me to close the door. They had captured the rat under a bucket as they saw it running across the floor.
I stood watching as they carefully lifted one side of the bucket to try to catch it, but it got free again and was heading right toward me. It looked like it was going to run between my legs. Hoping to slow its progress enough that I could grab it by the base of the tail (a common way to lift a rat to move it from one place to another), I quickly moved my heels together to block its path. Instead of slowing and changing directions, it headed up my foot and up the inside of my pant leg. I wasn’t too concerned, because these rats were fairly docile. I also had pet rats as a boy and knew it would have to stop when the pant leg got snug enough around my knee, and I could then grab it by the tail and pull it back out.
Unfortunately, I was wearing baggy pants that day. It continued past my knee, up my thigh, and, didn’t stop until it hit my beltline. I felt something warm and a small wet spot appeared on my pants. I was still maintaining my composure, so was pretty sure the wet spot wasn’t from me, but I blurted out, “Oh, man!” As you can imagine, my two co-workers were not much help because they were laughing so hard. Then I felt something else, shook my leg, and two little rat turds fell out of my pant leg. “Oh, Man!!!” My co-workers could hardly breath. The rat then turned right and started doing laps around my waist. I was just about to drop my drawers. However, after two laps, the little creature stopped by my right front pocket. I unzipped my fly, reached in, grabbed him by the tail, and extracted him from my pants. I felt like a magician pulling a rabbit from my hat, but it was a rat from my pants. My co-workers were rolling on the floor in hysterics. So, I say again, the answer is “yes, a rat will run up your pant leg!”
No offense to any of you fine folks, but I wish to heck I never would have read this.
MY mouse trap is MISSING.
I keep a small mouse trap set at all times in the corner of the back parts counter.
Once a month or so I catch one and re-set it.
I close all the doors to the back counter area at night, roll up steel doors over the counters and a sliding door to the main warehouse.
Six months ago I came to work and slid the big door over and saw my mouse trap in the corner 'tween the door and the wall…no mouse…25 feet from the corner I leave it in.
Mighty mouse had drug it untill it became stuck then yanked out his remaining tail and ran off.
Today the mouse trap is flat out missing…M.I.A.