On October 1, Miles realizes that the house has mice. After researching local exterminators on Facebook, he hires a communally beloved man known as “the Rat Man of Vermont.” The Rat Man, a large man who jokes that he looks like Garfield, arrives and tells Miles a story about a woman with webbed fingers who was a professional flycatcher on television. After inspecting the house, the Rat Man explains that the house sits on a “Super-Rat-Line” (102), an ancient and massive rodent migration path. He declares that the problem is untreatable, comparing it to an incurable cancer.

Miles then buys a humane trap, but on the first night, three of the four captured mice are killed and partially eaten by the fourth. After adjusting the trap by adding food, he begins to catch mice successfully and relocates them two miles away, as per internet instructions. Meanwhile, Kate urges Miles to make friends, citing the work of her friend Miranda, an associate professor whose TED Talk on male loneliness introduced the “Kim-Brooks Isolation Index” (106). Kate then arranges for Miles to meet Andrei Abramov, the husband of a fellow academic who has left his own career to embrace country life.