rat nom a rat ran across the sidewalk of quebec street the other night when i was biking home 070318 ... nom besides "good luck" i thought "wow,...city" 070318 ... hsg1437 thank_you_for_cycling we need more people doing more miles everday. u use toeclips? 070319 ... ovenbird This past February, on a drizzly day that had me setting a fire in the fireplace just to remember what real light looked like, a small rat came to my yard to die after ingesting poison from one of the now ubiquitous rodent bait stations. I found the rat immobile on my garden path, wearing a coat of fine misty rain, sides heaving as it tried to breathe. I could feel its suffering, as if my mind had moved from my body to the small whiskered one at my feet. I could feel how cold it was, how desperate, how the simple act of being hungry led to this painful and unjust final hour. And once that suffering became my own there was no way to ignore it. I moved the body, barely heavier than a bird, and still clinging to the last shreds of living, to a bucket. I put the bucket on its side in the garden so the rat would be sheltered from the rain and surrounded by green things rather than the cruel concrete. The snowdrops were blooming and it seemed kinder to die among the mournful heads of flowers, bowed in respect, than exposed to the thrashing elements. A short time later I found the rat dead. It was transformed, deflated. Without breath to fill its body it already seemed to be collapsing into decay. I cried then, and I’m crying again now just thinking of the way its eyes no longer opened to the light, but became dull pits for the rain to enter. I cried because no living thing should suffer simply for daring to live alongside us, in our gardens and yards. We haven’t given them much choice. We’ve left so little by way of habitats and rats have adapted to survive in the underbellies of our cities. This small soul did not deserve to suffer internal haemorrhage at the hands of people who act like gods and bestow the name “vermin” on whatever lives displease them. I found an old shoebox and lined it with paper towels, making a nest that looked soft enough and kind enough to hold a sleeping creature. I tucked the rat into the box and let tears fall on its wet fur as I closed the lid. Dropping that box in the dumpster felt wrong, but the ground was too wet for a proper backyard burial and I worried that animals would dig up the body. The image of that tiny being on its way to eternity in the bottom of a shoebox comes back to me often. My own life is hardly worth more in the eyes of the world, being an invisible stay-at-home mom, powerless and uninteresting. So who would notice me if I took the bait station nearest my home and hid it so it couldn’t be refilled the next time pest control came around? I’ll bet I would go undetected. Like a rat. 251028 what's it to you? who go blather from