Rats!

Many, many years ago, I worked in a pet store part time to supplement my meager wages as I waited to move from the Army to the Air Force.  It was a good gig, and I liked animals.  One of the things I liked about working there was that the two women I worked for took a Bartles & James Wine Cooler break every day about 11 am.  I, having just returned from Germany, didn’t know what these new fangled things were and didn’t realize that they contained alcohol.  I always felt a little fuzzy after our B&J break, but I didn’t ask questions and it made the day go by more quickly.

I got all the crappy jobs—literally.  I cleaned the cages of the small animals, scooped out the litter boxes for the kittens, and scrubbed the crap off the fish tank walls and suctioned out the goop in the bottom of the tanks.  I was young then, and willing to do it. 

I did some cool things, like hand feed the baby Conyers until they were old enough to be adopted out.  Sometimes, I got to feed the Toucan, and I learned that the name Love Birds is a misnomer.

Some days were better than others.  One day, I had a cage full of about 20 gerbils—far too many for such small confines, but we had received a couple of groups from customers who were trading for gerbil supplies, so it was what it was.  The only problem is, one of those 20 gave birth to a litter of six and I had to figure out which one was the mama and sequester them.  I don’t think it was the right one, but I won’t go into that.  I just wish there was an easy way to tell the difference between a male and female gerbil after you’ve had a B&J Wine Cooler.

The worst day of all was the day the rat shipment came in and I was there.  Instructed to unload them, I was a bit leery.  I carefully closed the door to the back room so they wouldn’t escape should something untoward happen, and carefully opened the box.  One by one, I loaded them into the rat container, each by the tail.  Nearing the end of the box, I reached down and grabbed the final rat.  SNAP.  The tail broke in two and the rat scurried down my bare leg onto my ever-so-stylish tube socks and scampered somewhere in the dark confines of the storage room.  Holding the top of the tail in my hands, stunned beyond belief, I stood there, realizing that my career in retail pet sales was soon to be over.  I found the rat, which was ill from some vitamin deficiency, but was instructed to inform customers that this one was half off.  And, of course, the only thing missing was a B&J Wine Cooler, which I promptly drank.

Which just gets me to the point that today, I’m still no fan of rats.  There are two—a male and female—judging only by size and not by checking it out personally, who live between the shed and fence of the house next door.  The unfortunate thing is that the fence has a gap in it and the rats head out each night on my side, run along the top of the fence, over to the other neighbor’s house, where they pull down oranges, eat them, and leave the peel behind, then head back.  I’ve mentioned this to the neighbor’s teenage son, but nothing’s been done to date.  I took this picture to show them—and while I hate to be the cause of the little rats’ demise, I will be sure to drink a B&J Wine Cooler in their honor when they’re gone.

Published on: Sep 7, 2006