Syndicate: rats

["Sally Jane Norman" <norman@wanadoo.fr>]

Rats

Rats in the roof dammit. Place is full of rodents, they?e sneaked in under
the tiles : rats, mice, dormice, a nightly mad hatter? teaparty. Trying to
sleep under the eaves as they grind gnaw crunch chew into your dreams,
skedaddle over your head, hop skip jump between your ears. You know about
nightmares, just try nightrats. Tried all kinds of repellants, even some
stupid ultrasound device that just prevents humans from sleeping with its
40kh blips. Smell a rat ? Action is called for. They won? get the hint
otherwise. Rodents are just there to make life miserable for humans.
Constant presence. Relentless. Automatic. Programmed to piss people off.
Ignoring them won? make them leave. They seem to become increasingly
destructive, vindictive. Got to get in there and let them know who? boss.
Big time arsenal. Traps, poison, all kinds of deadly weapons. It? them or
me. They?e destroying the insulation and how can you stay snug and cozy
with no insulation ? That thing that keeps your world weather-proof, secured
against outside dangers, autonomous and manageable. Funny the way the
dilemma feels much more acute in the daytime, as I line up the ladder and
put on gloves and get ready to do my bloody dealings, than at night, at 3 or
4 am when they?e really getting wild up there. Misgivings harder to deal
with in broad daylight with a bit of hindsight. Whereas instantly murderous
anger has been firing my umpteenth nocturnal awakening every night for too
many nights. Rodent poisons are horrific. Most are based on anticoagulants.
That? why they?e slow acting - the poor critters just bleed from internal
hemorrhaging. Just as well Brigitte Bardot isn? on this goddam list - then
again, she wouldn? have any rats down on her illegally private beach in
Saint Tropez with all those National Front guardians watching over her
sleep. Warfarin, that? the stuff. In a previous life (cats have nine, my
rats have at least ten so not counting mine) as a translator doing a lot of
pharmacology and other strange high tech stuff there was a very weird
emergency job once for an NGO : an expert? analysis of talcum powder being
used in a maternity hospital in one of those countless war-stricken
incessantly martyred places on our planet, and the powder had been
inexplicably cut with warfarin. It was hideous racing the clock to translate
this piece of infamy feeling the outrage and disbelief yet trying
desperately hard to stay professionally as sharp as possible because
apparently somebody needed that text badly and fast for the right reasons.

Well better get up that ladder. Or maybe not. Can I live with rats ?  How
much freedom is too much ?

Shit. The birds have been at the datura again. The leaves look like Calais
lace. Birds are flying high as kites. Tu parles.

One of those days. Polonius hiding behind the arras. Swashbuckling
swordsmanship turns arras tapestry into calais lace. Les trois
mousquetaires.

Hey Andreas, remember that insane ski video that we watched, stunned, back
in Liverpool at LEAF? The yodeling sound track that made it all so comical,
this athletic figure ripping through the snowy streets, swooping left and
right this funny chewing gum elastic silhouette against the snowy hilly
scenery with the silly yodeling, until the person who had brought the video
explained that the skier was actually daredeviling his way through a kind of
sniper (v)alley somewhere in Sarajevo and that the real sound was that of
sniper gunfire... Can't forget it. Anybody got any news about Pogo the dog?

Rats

sjn



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