The Gross Thing

The other day, my kid, ( herefore known as “Big Critter”) ran into the house, quite excited.

“Mommy,” she asked. “Come outside, I have something really cool to show you.”

“Is it gross?” I asked. She is, after all, my kid.

“Um…yeah.”

“Okay, let’s go.” So she took me outside, and had me crouch down by the corner of the chicken coop.  Here’s what I saw:

This is Esmerelda, our cutest chicken. She is not gross. Neither is she very interesting (Sorry, Esmerelda. It’s true.  You lay green eggs, but that’s about the extent of your mystery.)

“No, mommy, look up.”

So I looked up under the lime trees branches. You could only see it from one angle, which is why it had been there so long, despite the smell.

It was a roof rat. It looked like it had tried to climb into the chicken coop and gotten stuck in the deer netting. Either it died of exposure, or my velociraptor-descended hens pecked it to death.  I hope the latter.  If the hens killed a rat, I can lord that over our useless lazy cats, who aren’t pulling their weight.

(Yes, Chai, I know you caught one last year, but what have you done for me lately? If you really loved me, you’d leave a dead rat on my doorstep.)

It was really, really disgusting.  Big Critter and I looked at each other.

“Ewww!” we said.

And then we went to find her friend, so her friend could see it.  Her friend showed it to her mother, and then when Little Critter came home from school, we showed it to her, and when their daddy came home, we showed it to him as well.

But eventually we ran out of people to show it to.  I asked who wanted to get rid of it.  Big Critter said “OneTwoThreeNOTIT!” and I was the last one to touch my nose, so I had to do it.

The rat was hard to get to. It was way under the lime tree, so I had to duckwalk under the low, thorny branches. I was wearing my gardening gloves, because, ew. Dead rat.

Even with the gloves on, it was really, really gross to touch.  It didn’t smell, but the texture was horrible.  Imagine you have baked a potato until the skin got thick and leathery and dry so that it crackled. Now imagine that you hollowed it out and put nut shells in it.  That’s what it felt like, except that the leathery skin was rat fur and the nut shells were its bones.

It was quite tangled in the deer netting, so I had to pull the netting apart with my fingers. I didn’t dare pull on the rat, because it felt like it would break into two pieces. The only thing grosser than a dead rat it two halves of a dead rat.

Now I should point out that this was really, really dead.  All its organs had sublimed away.  If it were any deader, it would be wrapped in linen strips and buried under a pyramid, with its organs jarred.

But suddenly I heard a squeaking sound.  My ears heard “squeak” and my eyes saw “rat” and my hand decided to eject it from my grip without consulting my brain in this decision.  My brain managed to get my hand to pick up the rat again by informing it that the squeaking sound had come from me.  Apparently I squeak when I’m disgusted.

Here’s what I looked like carrying the rat to the dumpster.

I have helpfully illustrated exactly where one itches, when one has been touching a dead rat.

I didn’t take pictures of it.  Sorry you missed it. It was really gross.