So I go out to fire up my gas grill last night - my usual procedure is just to open both valves, hit the igniter and listen for the pop and rumble of the flames, then walk away to come back in 5 minute or so to lift the lid, scour the grate, etc.
For some reason I opened the lid to make sure the fire had started, and it took me a moment to figure out that something was moving around under the grates and on top of the lava-rock layer. I went to shut off the gas but by that time Mama Rat had squeezed out from under and jumped to the deck, and scampered away… leaving a trail of pinkies all the way as they lost their grip on her fur.
Grossed me out and disturbed me on several levels, but I was in too much of a hurry to let the grill cool back down and check for more pinkies down in the burner area… so I just ran it extra hot and scoured the grills good. The pinkies were gone when I got home two hours later, so I assume she collected them.
Need to tack-weld some mesh on the vent holes, I guess. Second rat I’ve encounted in stuff - the first was in a basement nest and I trapped three adults before the traps stopped springing. That sighting had a pinky-laded mama, too, so I keep expecting to find a pile of dead, shriveled pinkies some day when I move the last boxes.
I dunno what I’ll find in the grill. Ew.
My worst rat related experience… I was poking around in an old abandoned farm house when I was about 15, I opened a drawer in the kitchen and a rat the size of a kitten ran up my arm and launched itself off of my shoulder. :eek:
The rest of my ‘poking around’ (after I quit breathing hard and trembling) was done with a long stick. 
Grilled Rats? Wasn’t that a Zappa album?
Hot Rats, but so close!
My friend had the same thing happen but it was her kitten. Her dad put away the grill for the winter and when looking all over for the kitten all winter failed, the poor thing was found dead in the grill next summer.
Great user name/thread title combination!
I got one of my best cats from such a near-miss. I had a streetside mailbox (regular round-top kind) but all my mail went to a PO box. I would check the street box about once a week to clear out the trash.
One very hot day, I went out of my way to check the box, completely off schedule and for no reason I’ve ever been able to recall. Someone had stuffed a scrawny male kitten into the box, possibly as a prank or to be mildly cruel. He easily could have died long before I found him.
He grew into a massive Maine Coon that thought he was a dog, and his name was Due. Postage Due. Lost him 12 years later to an overlooked back abscess that got into his spinal fluid. Still miss him. Even though (to bring the story full circle) he once left a large dead rat in the kitchen, which I promptly threw out into the back yard. Big mistake. The next day, there was HALF a dead rat in the kitchen.
I once had to snake out a tenant’s toilet and pulled out (spoiler box is for pure and utter grossness.
three newborn kittens. Tenant said she’d figure they would go down cause they were smaller than some of her shits
Well, to be fair, she had to have been a pretty big shit.:mad: