By the time I moved to Unalaska Island in the early 1990s, the Norway rat population was mostly under control. Having escaped from visiting ships, the rodents had invaded many Aleutian Islands and thrived in towns and villages, growing as big as 1958 Buicks on their Dumpster diet.

Illustrated by Eric Piatkowski

In the 1980s there had been a serious effort at rat eradication by the city of Unalaska, with help from some bored residents. Reportedly, organized rat hunting at the Unalaska dump resembled a scene from a post-Apocalyptic movie: It took a hunting rifle just to knock one down.

But when I started patrolling the streets of Dutch Harbor, the rats that remained, like the drug dealers I was paid to catch, lived a nocturnal life. I’d see them crawling around fishing nets and Dumpsters as I worked the graveyard shift. A lot of them lived among the beach rocks, eating the biological flotsam and jetsam until the cold hit, then they moved to warmer places—such as my rental house.

One particularly cold night I lay awake, listening as rats scurried behind the thin paneling of our bedroom wall. I was tormented by their presence, but my wife, Kate, slept soundly until my thrashing woke her.

When I questioned how she could possibly sleep while Norway rats were invading her living space, she calmly explained that the rats, as fellow creatures of the Earth, were simply fulfilling their need for comfort and food and should be left to their scurrying, as she should be left to her sleeping.

With her enlightened mind-set, she drifted off to sleep as I silently cursed the darkness and all the vessels that had ever visited the Aleutians. God help everyone in the morning if I went to work tired. Men who carry guns should be well rested.

I covered my head with a pillow when a new sound began, but that didn’t help me sleep. If you heard that sound in your car, you’d pull over and call OnStar or AAA. It sounded as if the old ramshackle place was about to be chewed down, starting somewhere in the kitchen. Each time I’d jump from bed and hurry to the kitchen to investigate, the sound would cease, replaced by the scramble of tiny feet somewhere under the sink.

Kate slept through it all.

I briefly considered my options, and strafing the cabinets with a Tommy gun while sneering and muttering, “You dirty rat!” sounded appealing. But I had no such gun, and using my service weapon would violate my employer’s firearms policy. I could legally defend my home against a human intruder, but any mention of rodents was conspicuously missing from that section of the official Unalaska Police Department policy manual. Besides, our neighbors below slept in my line of fire, and I liked them.

Seizing the moment, I realized this noisy rodent was no match for an Alaska outdoorsman. Preparing for the final showdown, I armed myself with a ski pole and headlamp. I figured I’d wait silently until the rat was certain I had gone back to bed, and, as soon as the noise resumed, I’d whip the cupboard door open, turn on the light and skewer the intruder while he chomped a mouthful of our house. I stripped down, not wanting the rustle of fabric to give me away.

Silently I crouched in the dark, sure of the ultimate success of my plan. But as soon as I’d hear the scramble of small feet followed by the infernal gnawing, I’d fling open the cupboard door, turn on the headlight—and he’d be gone, faster than a four-wheeler at a PFD sale. A few times I saw beady eyes in the darkness and thrust the ski pole toward them without success. Seeing the eyes was like winning a few coins at the slots, and I’d be suckered into just one more try.

And then just one more.

As I crouched in the dark, having lost count of my failed attempts to dispatch the intruder, I heard the bedroom door swing open behind me. I turned to see Kate, awakened by the repeated creaking of the cupboard door hinges and my frustrated mutterings, staring at me in curiosity. I must have been quite a sight, naked and sweating, sporting a headlamp and wielding a ski pole. She just shook her head and closed the door.

In time, I collapsed on the living room floor, exhausted from the unsuccessful naked ski pole hunting. Kate was right, I thought, as the oblivion of sleep swept over me. Let this house fall around us. It’s natural!

I woke a few hours later feeling as if I’d been drinking all night at the legendary Elbow Room bar. Investigation in the daylight revealed the cupboard rat had chewed into an empty milk carton—in the trashcan. The cupboard acoustics amplified the sound. In my newly enlightened state, I congratulated him for his persistence and hoped he got the sustenance he was seeking in the dregs of my milk.

I hung my head over a cup of coffee, still trying to get my bearings, when I heard a loud “Eek!”—the noise women in cartoons make when they spy a rodent. I looked up to see my enlightened, live-and-let-live wife spring from the bathroom, pajama pants around her ankles, resembling someone far in the lead of a county fair potato sack race. It was probably the milk lover that had shot past her feet through a small, newly made hole in the wall, while she was busy in the seated position.

Illustrated by Eric Piatkowski

I went to investigate and found a hole that looked like something from a cartoon—Tom and Jerry came to mind. It was a small, perfectly shaped arch at floor level. A journeyman carpenter could not improve on the hole’s construction. Kate, now properly dressed, was on all fours on the bathroom floor, peering into the darkness behind the wall.

Taking her place, I saw nothing but blackness and, shaking my drowsy head, I spouted some wisdom I’d recently learned the hard way: The rat was just seeking shelter like the rest of us, so leave it be.

Here’s a tip, men: don’t say that to your wife if she’s just seen a rat, especially not while on all fours on the floor. I won’t go into a lot of detail, but I will say I know how the punted pigskin feels.

Later that day, our neighbor—the one I had decided not to accidentally shoot—found a dead rat in his shoe, compliments of his cat.

Long before ski poles and headlamps, St. John of the Cross in Dark Night of the Soul wrote of the loneliness and suffering one must endure to find real wisdom. I’ve never been able to plow through John’s dusty tome, but I now understand his general drift, after my Dark Night of the Ski Pole when, thanks to a Alaska-bred rattus norvegicus and an enlightened spouse, I learned to co-exist with nature, indoors and out.

Ross Nixon is a pilot based in Anchorage. He wrote about meeting his wife in a Dutch Harbor bar in the Dec./Jan. 2010 issue.