Now first of all, someone i know, a good friend, had a rat problem. Let's call this friend, "Teddie." He lives in an old house with a leaky foundation and over the past couple of hundred years generations of some rat species have probably mutated, while other evolutionary lines have died off during certain cataclysmic events such as poisenings or gassings.
The place had seemed rat-free over the past 10 years until this spring, when the garbage on the porch was torn into at night. And holes appeared beside the foundation. A RAT!
First, Teddie tried the humane thing with a cornucopia of garbage spilling out a havaheart trap. The rodent somehow got the treasure out without tripping the trap. Rubber bands were applied to the bait, but the cunning vermin saw through Teddies strategy, and avoided the trap thereafter.
Next, Teddie fell back to his reliance on high tech as an answer, and bought little rat electrocution chambers, better known as rat zappers. After sleeping soundly, confident in his science god, Teddie would rise at dawn and eagerly skip down to the garbage cans, heart tripping when he noticed the blinking red light, indicator that a fat juicy electrocuted rat lay inside, ready for sanitary disposal. It was like Christmas! But there was no rat! The powerful creature must have shaken off the zap and trundled off with the bait, laughing all the way to the nest!.
Low-tech next, Teddie went out and got large snap-traps, the kind that will sever your finger if you're not careful. Delicous morsels of cat food were impaled on the bait hook, and the traps tensed, trembly, tingly, waiting for a sleek rat-spine to snap.
These were ignored. The rat (Teddie has to think of this thing in the singular or he will go insane) apparently had better things to do than be severed in half.
Finally, Teddie was forced to use poisen packets. He sprinkled these on a the foundation ledges, and they were grabbed immediately like treats or beads at mardi-gras. The package says they go outside to die, looking for water. Unfortunately, this rat decided he would rather die at home and stink up the wall in a final act of revenge. In a vain effort to mask the stench, Teddie put flowers in the death zone - which brings me to this painting.
This started out as a bouquet painting but the rats are destroying it. I gave it a little anti-violence against women tilt and there you have it.
posted by Eddie 6/10/2001 08:41:38 AM