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for most people, it’s probably natural that your dog kills rats. but koda is known for being super gentle to the point that aina could reach into the dog’s mouth and pull her tongue out. One time, koda was defeated and bleeding on the nose, bitten by an annoying mini schnauzer during a fight initiated by the schnauzer, whose size is about 1/4th of koda. we always make fun of her, saying that koda is not a dog, she’s a stuffed animal… no killer instinct whatsoever. the only thing that she would hunt and kill is the wandering spiders and bugs that enter the house, just because i would scream when i see them.

but this early morning, at 3:15am, she proved us wrong.

for the past three days, koda has been eyeing the kitchen floor drain. at night, she would sit quietly in the kitchen, facing the drain for half an hour straight, sometimes, more.

a little over 3am, we were woken up by high pitch sound of a mouse/rat, combined with koda’s barks (fyi, koda doesn’t usually bark!) and the clang-clang-clang sound of our pots and pans. it was rather noisy. in the dark, i saw ari immediately stood up and ran out of the bedroom. i followed him downstairs. then, he went back up to the room again. it turned out that he forgot to wear his glasses… ah, panicky situation.

after turning all the lights on, we saw koda battling a medium sized rat in the kitchen. it was about the size of 250ml coke bottle with a fat belly. it was more panicky than us, trying to find a way out of the kitchen while constantly being cornered by koda. from what we saw, there was no visible wound on the rat. no blood on the floor either, although there were many stinking pee drops from the super-scared rat.

at that time, all we were worried about is the wounds koda would have from getting bitten by the rat. so, ari told me to get a broom or something that he can use to hit the rat with. unfortunately, all the brooms were in the storage room in the kitchen. so ari went out and grabbed his sandal, which is totally useless in inflicting any sort of pain on the fat rat…

and then the strangest thing happened. once ari entered the kitchen holding his sandal, all hell broke loose. the rat tried to go into the drain hole, but it was covered by a brick. koda ran after the rat, followed by louder bang of the pots and pans. then there was a very loud scream from the rat along with koda barking a few times. then, ari saw that the rat is in koda’s mouth. eww.

ari pulled koda out of the kitchen after she let the rat go. i had to hug and hold the dog so that she doesn’t jump back into the kitchen. i could feel koda’s racing heart beat… so fast!

then ari said, the rat is dead…. the neck broke and the head was sort of scrunched up. it was quite bloody. there were blood on koda’s muzzle… there were probably some pee too.

a lot of cleaning followed soon after. the kitchen floor was scrubbed. koda was inspected (and also scrubbed). i had to run to buy some Dettol (thank god for 24-hour grocery store within walking distance) to clean koda. it turned out that koda didn’t suffer any wounds whatsoever. whew!

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that night (or early morning), after all the cleaning is done and our adrenaline level went back to normal, ari and i talked about what happened. how could our gentle koda killed a rat. ari was pretty proud. i was more on the worry side, that she would be “less gentle” and become a rat-killer.

but after discussing about what happened, we come into a conclusion that koda killed because ari was holding a sandal… :)

you see, during the spider infestation period, ari and koda always do the spider-hunting together. ari would be holding a sandal, or a magazine, or anything to slap the spider with, and koda will sometimes be the one who catches and kills the spider.

so, when the rat entered the kitchen, koda’s killing instinct wasn’t switched on yet. she was probably guarding the house, so she slapped, growled and barked at the rat. when we went downstairs and saw her, she still did the same thing. but once she saw ari ran next to her holding a “weapon” (a sandal, in this case), she assumes that she could kill the intruder. that’s probably why it happened so quickly once ari entered the kitchen with the sandal…