Just when you think you're alone...

I was alone. I'd been alone for several hours, sitting in my skivvies under the fan, as I worked on some editing for the office. I had the i-pod going, some hip-hop techno podcast, Cut Killer and DJ No Name. I was in my groove, working, grooving, and starting to feel a little hungry as the sun began its rapid descent.

Still blasting music, I take the sausages out of the fridge. I look for my usual pot, but it is dirty, and I am in editing mode, not domestic mode, so I seek another pot. Ah, the ones on the top shelf, where I keep the napkins. It's just above eye-level, nested in larger pots, so I get real close and go up on my toes. Hm, what... ARGH! I shout, and then I do a lot of swearing, my heart is racing, as a pair of beady eyes bulge out much the same as mine have done. A damned rat is in my pot, in my napkins, doing God knows what! I tap the pot with a large spoon. I see his tail dangling out. I push the button on the kettle, thinking to boil that sumbitch! But then I think, how cruel of me, he's only trying, or she's only trying to share the same ecosystem, and really, it didn't look like one of those nasty Rats of Nim.

So I decided against scalding the little shit, and I tap the pots until the creature runs this way, runs, that, it's a big fucker, too, and fast, and my main concern is getting it out of the house and not into the bedroom. My heart is pounding. It's go time, and I grab the broom... a little jab, a little feint, and then the thing is scurrying blue murder past the fridge and then gets caught at the door, as going too fast and the gap is really small. So there is more flurried, scurried paws, and pow, gone. In the space of one minute. I laugh my ass off remembering how it scared the shit out of me. I was so deep in my world of techno I didn't expect to find another living creature in my pots.

It turns out there was no rat shit, only some nibbled bits of plastic from a lid, and a nest of fluffed and plumped tissues. It was kind of cute, and then I thought, it's hotter than hell, and this bastard is using my napkins to make a bed in a metal pot? I'm looking for a rat psychologist later today.