8:54 p.m. | 2002-09-27 Good Golly Miss Molly & Rat Bastards. I�d like to thank everyone who supports me and my profanity. I mean, godfuckindamnit, I not only got support, I got encouragement. You guys are the best fucking bastards in the whole world! ** In return for your support, I�m gonna tell you a little story about courage. Although I threw out that tarantula story without any warning (sorry about that TranceJen and all others who despise spiders) and I didn�t receive any complaints, I will now provide the following warning about this entry. If you are at all freaked out by rodents of any kind, you may want to now leave and go to a diary that�s vermin-free. This little tale is not for the faint-hearted. Trust me, I was there. (Pause) Okay then. I left work at lunchtime one Friday because I was ridden with pain. I was hungry though and was thrilled to find some sort of frozen dinner in my usually barren freezer. I decided to throw this gourmet meal into the oven to cook it the old-fashioned way. While it was cooking, I commenced to get settled in to rest my pain away. I changed my clothes, got my blanky (it was Winter time), flipped on the TV, took some drugs (of the prescribed kind), etc. Then I started to smell this very vile, wicked scent in my house. I wondered what the fuck it was. It seemed to be coming from the kitchen. I opened the oven and checked out my lunch. Nothing seemed amiss. I was becoming quite confused and the stench was getting stronger. I kept checking the oven but nothing was in there except the frozen dinner and I was NOT smelling something that came from that little dinner. In a moment of clarity, I opened the broiler pan drawer. OH MY FUCKING GOD! I slammed it shut immediately. With my foot. Why? Because there was a huge rat lying in the drawer. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, I WAS COOKING A RAT. Well, no fucking wonder it smelled so vile. To be more precise, I was gassing a rat since I have a gas oven and all. Well what the FUCK do you do when that happens? I opened the drawer again to make sure that�s what I saw. I yelled EEEWWWWW and slammed it shut again. With my foot. Then I did that little grossed-out dance thing where you repeatedly say EEEWWWW while flapping your arms and leaping from foot to foot. I mean what the FUCK do you do at that point, besides abandoning your house, moving to another state and starting all over again. And where the FUCK was the man of the house? Oh yeah, in my fucking imagination. (I was actually dating someone at the time but I was trying to break up with him. In hindsight, I should have called him just to freak him out if nothing else.) So I started with the easiest task first. I opened all the windows. In fucking December. Now in addition to the pain, vile smell and emotional trauma, I was fucking freezing to death. I then decided that I must determine if this rat was dead or simply unconscious. If it was alive and I knocked it unconscious by gassing it and I turned off the oven, it might wake up and jump out of the drawer which would�ve certainly resulted in my death from a heart attack. However, if it was already dead, then I was just continuing to cook a rat corpse and that wasn�t a good thing. So, I ran out to the garage to find a device with which to touch the rat to see if it reacted. Why I thought I would have such a device is still a mystery to me, but that�s what I did. Needless to say, I didn�t find anything. I don�t even know what I was looking for. I came back in the house and improvised. I took a wire hanger, undid it and rolled up one end a few times until it resembled a kind of primitive golf club, albeit a very small one. Then, I opened the drawer again, moved as far away as physically possible and reached out with the hanger to touch the rat. Okay, the first time I tried, I busted into the grossed-out dance before I even made contact. I tried again and successfully made contact. Yep, definitely dead. Real dead. Phew, I turned off the oven. Now what? I had to dispose of this corpse but how? I decided that I would place a huge paper bag on the floor, give the rat a good thwack with my improvised golf club and knock it all the way into the bag which I would then immediately deposit in the outside garbage can. I gathered up my courage, got into position and thwacked the rat. Not a goddamn thing happened. That rat was fastened to the bottom of the drawer. On the second thwack, its tail appeared � it had been under the broiler pan � which made this thing twice as big. Suffice it to say, many, many thwacks and grossed-out dances later, I managed to knock that GODDAMNED FUCKING rat onto my kitchen floor. I missed the bag. HOLY FUCKING CHRIST BATMAN! Mustering up the last of my strength, I managed to finally thwack that deal ole rat into the bag. I immediately took it, my frozen dinner and my improvised golf club out to the trash. I do believe that I actually apologized to the hanger for engaging it in such a service. That accomplished, I closed the broiler drawer, put a bowl of vinegar in the oven (it absorbs all kinds of nasty smells), and cleaned the floor. (Do I even have to tell you that I was no longer hungry?) I knew I would have to sterilize the broiler drawer and pan, but that was more than I could handle in one day. I sterilized everything the next day and continued with the whole vinegar thing. Eventually, everything returned to normal. Why would I have a rat in my house? Well, because my house is old and has all kinds of access holes I don�t even know about. Plus, all the cats in my hood are very well-fed and sissy-cats who are afraid of rats. A little D-Con took care of that problem. Life has tested me many, many times and I�ve always been surprised at the courage I�ve mustered, but that was the most courageous thing I�ve ever done. And, I�ve only shared that story with a few people because it�s a rather gruesome story and because people start to question your habitat when rats are all up in it. But, I decided to be daring and share that little story with all of you. I sure the hell hope you learned something from it. Just for the record, I went around saying �those rat bastards� for quite awhile after that. And when I cleaned the bottom of my broiler drawer I discovered it�s embossed with these words of wisdom. �DO NOT USE FOR STORAGE.� your thoughts? seed flower