Maybe the rats wanted the sign down ...

Cute story today in The Chicago Sun-Times, which has been more than holding its own against the Trib as the story of corruption charges against Gov. Rod Blagojevich unfolds. It concerns a sign in the alley behind Blagojevich's home warning that rat poison ...

Oh, a picture is worth a thousand words.

So follow this link to see the sign. Then come back here to read how The Sun-Times handled the story.

Under the headline "Sign warning of rats in Blagojevich's alley taken down," city hall reporter Fran Spielman wrote:

City Hall smells a rat behind the Northwest Side home of Gov. Blagojevich -- and it has nothing to do with the explosive corruption charges leveled against the governor.

Earlier this week, John White, the Chicago Sun-Times Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, shot a picture of the governor ducking out of his Ravenswood Manor home and into a black SUV driven by his bodyguards to avoid passing through a news media gauntlet.

The photo showed Blagojevich next to a city sign that said, "Warning" and "Target Rats" with a picture of a rat inside a red bulls-eye.

The delicious irony of an alleged political rat being photographed next to the warning sign about actual rats was apparently not lost on the governor, his family or staff.

On Friday morning, Blagojevich left his house by the same back door, but there was something missing. The rat sign had been taken down. That's even though it was posted by the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation on a wooden pole in the city-owned alley behind the governor's house.

But the nicest touch -- I almost said "most delicious," but thought better of it -- came at the end of Spielman's story:

Streets and Sanitation spokesman Matt Smith refused to take the bait by accusing Blagojevich of the surreptitious sign removal.

"We have no idea who would have taken down that sign. Obviously people shouldn't take down city signs. For those who haven't seen it, it alerts residents on that block that we last baited that alley in October of 2008.

We're pretty certain everyone knows that by now," Smith said.

"We didn't remove it. People can speculate about other reasons someone might have taken it down. We plan to repost that sign some time in the near future when it isn't likely to be the center of attention. In the meantime, residents of that block can be assured that alley was baited in October."

I await the sequel with bated breath.