Pushkin.

No, no, it was much more like terrified than that.

I'm going through my sound effects library with my friend and producer Ryan Dilly.

I'm trying to find a very specific scream, one that's forever etched into my memory.

No, that's like way more of a badly brave scream.

I think we needed more high pitched and frantic and fearful.

We're trying to re-enact a rather horrifying moment that Ryan and I experienced a few months back.

We were working on our podcast scripts and Ryan needed a cup of coffee, so he headed into the kitchen, and that was when I heard it.

I think that's pretty close, I think that was it.

Ryan emitted the longest, loudest, and most terrifying shriek I've ever heard.

Apparently, a huge terrifying rat had run through the kitchen, a rodent that was, at least according to Ryan's retelling, about the size of a large, great dain, or a small horse.

I assumed he was exaggerating and that it was probably just a harmless mouse.

The kind we get on college campuses from time to time, especially when there's construction outside.

A tiny mouse that was probably now feeling so terrorized by Ryan's scream, that it had likely high-tailed it out of the house, never to be heard from again.

But just as I was explaining that we had absolutely nothing to worry about.

The creature that I could now clearly see was definitely not a tiny mouse, was back.

It raced from the kitchen, into the study, around our feet, and then slithered into a heating duct on the wall.

But I wasn't worried. Not because the rat wasn't huge or terrifying. It was definitely both.

I just knew it wasn't going to be a problem for long.

Because at Yale, when these things happen, and you need someone to resolve the issue quickly, you just call.

Marty Gilorin, pest control operator.

Marty is like the terminator for Vermin. Within minutes, he was at my house, armed with baits and traps galore.

...