Surprise Rats, Epiphanies, & Underwear

I've come to a realization.

That whole episode following my break up was upsetting, as those kinds of things sometimes will be. I had a very understanding professor tell me that loss of that kind can often be likened with the death of a loved one. That is very true- I was reminded of the traumatic death of the rat I kept in high school through to college. As ridiculous as this sounds, and as trivial as you might think it makes my former relationship seem, I should probably explain that this rat was sort of like a member of the family.

When I was a kid, I had a habit I picked up from my mom, that was particularly irritating to my dad- which entailed bringing home the various animals I encountered and installing them in our house. By the time I turned 17, I got my license. This made things infinitely worse, because access to a car dramatically increased the number chance of encounters I had with random fauna, facilitated them, even. It also made it extremely easy for me to transport them home.

There was a small petshop in my hometown, and on one particular occasion I decided it would be a phenomenal idea to stop in and look at the rodents. I'd always wanted a mouse, there was this romantic notion in my head of keeping one in my pocket. Instead, I noticed a tank of ugly hairless looking things in a corner.

Darla was a rex, or half hairless rat, and the only girl in a litter of boys. She was so ugly, that when the girl working there told me the litter would be turned into snake food soon if nobody took them, I decided that she was better off with me.

The first 3 weeks of her life were spent residing nightly in the bottom drawer of my dresser, or daily in a shoe box that traveled EVERYWHERE with me. Within the week, my sister knew about her. In two weeks, so did the entire neighborhood. Everybody knew. Except my mother. After awhile, she started trying to fake me out. "I looked in that shoebox today." She would say carefully. "...No you didn't." "...How do you KNOW?!" How? Because if she had, I wouldn't have been alive to answer the question.

She eventually did find out, and immediately wished that she hadn't. She was rather frustrated with me, now that my sister and all her little friends knew what it was that I was carrying around everywhere in addition to the neighbors, while she still did not know. Having spent the last 3 weeks bringing the rat to and from school, and trying to keep the cat out of the room, I was a little weary of the secrecy, and thought that the entertainment value was depreciating- so maybe dropping the charade would be better. Besides, the week prior, Darla had realized that she could migrate throughout the dresser, and as a result I was now severely lacking in underwear and socks. Explaining why I needed to go shopping to replace all of these would be difficult without coming clean. I waited until she brought up the shoe box. Mom was angry, insisted that now she didn't want to know, and started dealing with dinner in the kitchen. My method of dealing with this, now that the underwear situation was getting dire, was to put the contents on my shoulder, and wander around the house (I would later use this similar technique to disclose my new tattoo- and it would be met with even less success).

"Here mom."
"What?"
"Shoe box."
"Wha- OH MY GOD-"

Apparently, the night before she'd stayed up watching a PBS thing on the bubonic plague, and the fact that there was a patchy looking rat in her house wasn't optimal.

Either way, cut a long story short, the rat became a regular member of the family, usually sat on me for meals, and got her own made for her by my mother when I was away at college. My sister complained.

"Mom made eggs this morning."
"Oh?"
"-For the rat."

When she passed away, there was much heartbreak, and I didn't get out of bed for about 3 days.