Rats

I am housesitting for someone this Thanksgiving. So I went over and picked up the keys and got the lowdown on the animals. This is someone I have house sat for many times over the years. I enjoy her animals. They are good, well behaved and generally fun. Now, she has a menagerie of animals because her daughter likes animals. 2 dogs, 2 rabbits and 2 rats.

Now most encounters with rats for me have been the wild kind. In alleys of downtown L.A. at night, scuttling along the sides of walls and buildings. You know, feral, big as cats and unafraid. Normally when I am housesitting, the rats stay elsewhere. I don't necessarily fear them but I think there is something primordial in humans that is repulsed by rats. Like in the caves, lurking beyond the firelight, they were there in the corners eating the refuse and thriving. Even then I'll bet that the cavemen were running around trying to bash them with clubs and grunting, "Holy crap, there's a rat!" BAM! Of course then they probably cooked them and ate the rats. Protien is protien after all...

So as she told me how to care for the rats, I looked at their bodies. That wasn't scary. Furry, rodents, not unlike the gerbils and hamsters I had as a kid. But then you see the tail. Hairless, long tapered, like a finger that has gone horribly wrong in development. And I think that is what freaks people out. The skin that looks all to human, it's fat and all too alive, attached to vermin.

Or maybe it's the fact that they can chew thru cinder blocks and tread water for 36 hours. Kind of a toss up...