Author: Glen

So we have a rat in our apart­ment. At least some of the time.

We’re not cer­tain of this, but our best guess is that he’s a refugee from our neigh­bors’ place. They’ve been try­ing to evict a rat for months.

And last night Paula and I saw him in our din­ing room.

We set out traps. He ate the food off of them and laughed at our anti­quat­ed tech­nol­o­gy. He must be a stain­less steel rat (how’s that for a gra­tu­itous geek ref­er­ence?)

Our oth­er neigh­bors have cats, and so we asked for a cat toy to set out. We were oper­at­ing under the the­o­ry that rats fear cats and that the smell would dri­ve him to safer realms. Alas–this is a bold rat who enjoys play­ing with cat toys.

So as a last-ditch effort, Paula and I are resort­ing to psy-ops.

We left a note on our neigh­bors’ door to woo him home.

Dear Rat,

Please come home. Our food is organ­ic and bet­ter-tast­ing. Also our kid is cute and wants a pet.

With much love,

Dirk & Emi­ly

In a very can­ny move, how­ev­er, our neigh­bors demon­strat­ed that they have careers in coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence in case oth­er things don’t pan out. The fol­low­ing was affixed to our door, direct­ly fac­ing the note that we had placed on their door.

Dear­est Rat,

Ignore the sign on the oth­er door–they just want to kill you! We looooove you!! And our kid is at a devel­op­men­tal­ly appro­pri­ate age to appre­ci­ate rodents. The oth­er kid will try to eat you. Or your poop.

Love,

The Davis­es

For­tu­nate­ly, Paula dis­cov­ered a hand­writ­ten mis­sive from the rodent at large which she deliv­ered to Emi­ly moments ago.

Dear Davis Fam­i­ly,

Thank you for your hos­pi­tal­i­ty. You place was a great vaca­tion spot. But now that the Robin­sons are back I think I should go home. After all, win­ter is com­ing and their kid would be more use­ful in a bliz­zard, if you know what I mean.

I appre­ci­ate the thought behind your note, but I know the Robin­sons quite well. After all, we share a bed­room (heck, some­times we share a futon).

Signed,

The Rat

Yes, it actu­al­ly says, “Signed, The Rat” at the end. Rats don’t get much instruc­tion in writ­ing let­ters at ele­men­tary school.

Any­way, I’ll keep you post­ed as devel­op­ments war­rant.

Quite a few peo­ple have con­tact­ed Paula and I because they know we’re from Louisiana and they’re con­cerned about our rel­a­tives and friends.

Thank you.

For those who might be curi­ous but haven’t con­tact­ed us, our imme­di­ate rel­a­tives were hard­ly affect­ed. Extend­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends all sur­vived but some lost every­thing.

When I was a kid we used to joke about how stu­pid it was to build a port city below sea lev­el. Every year it seemed that New Orleans would have a near miss with a hur­ri­cane and we’d start jok­ing about how dumb we Cajuns were. We knew with all the cer­tain­ty child­hood pro­duces that New Orleans would be wiped off the map one day.

Of course, when you’re a kid you don’t real­ly think about all the suf­fer­ing such a cat­a­stro­phe will entail. The news out of New Orleans is stag­ger­ing. The scari­est thing is that it could eas­i­ly have been much worse. Times like these remind us of just how frail and frag­ile all of human­i­ty’s accom­plish­ments real­ly are.

Any­way, all this leads me to won­der what jokes kids in Cal­i­for­nia make about the “Big One”. New Orleans final­ly got a bul­let it could­n’t dodge. I won­der when Cal­i­for­ni­a’s is com­ing… I hope I’m not here to see it.

Con­voy of Hope is doing a fine job of help­ing peo­ple. If you’ve been want­i­ng to give in some way, I know sev­er­al peo­ple who work for the out­fit and can assure you that they’re doing a stand­out job.