nin137

Earl

as if my life weren't strange enough as it is, I am now the
proud owner of a rat the size of a groundhog that i have
lovingly decided to call Earl.
sadly, one of our dwarf rats died this past week and as we
didn't want our surviving rat to be alone we scoured
craigslist for people that wanted to give away their rats.
here's a word of advice for you:
don't scour craigslist for people who want to give away
their rats.
this people are fucking creepy. anyhow, we found a "dwarf"
rat named Mickey and decided to take him in.
at about 5 pm this past friday a beat up dodge terra showed
up by our apartment complex.
it was one of those cars that makes you look to the sky
thinking that a boeing 747 is passing by above. out steps
this lady (and i had predicted this part) who was your
regular extremely overweight, border-line homeless looking
woman. everything from her yellow nails to her greyish,
sore-ridden skin suggested a lack of affinity for light and
a great affinity for big macs.
her dirty hair wisped around in the breeze as she pulled out
a carrier with two rats.
as she informed juli, she has one rat who, "always rides
with her."
it's weird enough when people bring their dogs or some shit
like that for a ride, but at least i can understand it with
a dog. dogs go bat-shit crazy when they're in a car,
normally the love it, they stick their noses out the window
and all that shit.
rats?
rats are not very happy to be in a car. they don't have a
very wide comfort zone. so out of this nasty ass case she
pulls this rat which, as i mentioned above, was about the
size of a six year old.
this was the "dwarf" rat. then she pulled out her
"companion", the rat was the size of a tractor-trailer!
and once again i realize that as much as i wished something
as easily measured as "size" were objective, it really is a
matter of relativity.
so then we're kind of apprehensive, i have this nasty ass
sewer rat the size of texas crawling all over me, freaking
out and digging his long ass claws into my skin, loosening
my flesh with his girth. as i'm standing there with a lady
whom i'm realizing is insane the more and more i speak with
her, i am passed by those high-maintenance sorority girls
you nromally see around campus...you know the kind who wear
makeup even when they're working out.
the reaction on their faces was just priceless. it was
complete apprehension with a twist of revoltion. so i'm
standing there enjoying the freak-out looks as i have a
wooly mammoth setting his dirty ass rat but on my shoulder
when i hear crazy rat lady say,
"yeah, he eats ANYTHING. i mean, he loves cottage cheese.
oh yeah and then as a treat i throw them chicken bones from
KFC."
now's a good time to mention that this lady said that she
has 42 (42!!!) rats. can you imaigne what happens when you
throw ONE chicken bone into a cage of 42 rats? christ.
i was starting to feel a bit nauseous. how can people be so
fucking stupid?
so now i'm feeling like i shuld take this rat as more of a
moral obligation than anything else. ten of cousre rat lady
sealed the deal for me. she said the following words,
"i do all of my own vet work."
okay:
1) she is not a licensed vet
2) she looks like kathey bates in misery...
so really what she had just said to us was,
"look, you can either take this rat now, or i will attempt
to neuter him in 3 to 4 weeks with a rusty screw-driver."
we took the rat.
so now we have this huge ass rat that stinks and looks just
as ugly as anyone who hates rats would imagine a rat to look
like. but believe it or not, after my first stage of
apprehension, i'm starting to almost feel a saintly duty
owed to this rat. and i'm hoping that he and starsky will
get along in the long run.

one more note that i've noticed from jiu jitsu. as i'm an
avid people-watcher i've noticed something quite interesting
about the guys who practice jiu jitsu with me. first off,
these guys look like the dudes who practice MMA (UFC type
stuff). they look like they eat nails and shit bricks. and
i've noticed one other thing about them. they are oddly
courteous. like to a point where you can tell that they're
doing it thinking, "i don't want to go back to jail, i don't
want to go back to jail." considering that most of these
guys look like they just came from the federal pen this
doesn't seem too far off.
in short, i feel like these dudes might have
anger-management issues and come to choke the life out of
people in a controlled setting. put it simply, these are
the types of dudes that you don't want to bump into and
spill their beer at 1:30 in the morning around last call.
but at jiu jitsu they're really nice and courteous and
always say,
"it's an honor practicing with you today or,
if i may, i think that the choke works best if you twist his
arm like this."
basically, i want to go out drinking with 4 or 5 of these
guys and just bump into some frat guys.
that would be a mushroom cloud waiting to happen.