Rattus Flatus

 
It’s well known that members of my species are great scavengers … we’ll eat just about anything. And as it happens, a rodent friend of mine, Gus, has a particular talent for sniffing out the greatest ginuea pig-out spots in our native home of Ratlanta, Georgia. About a week back, Gus and I went out for a night on the town and came across one of his favorite scavenging sites, O’Flannigan’s Irish Pub, home of the best corned beef and cabbage this side of the British Isles. Darting between the legs of a few unwitting parishioners and dashing around the corner just in time to miss the watchful eye of the Assistant Manager, Gus and I scuttled out the back door of the kitchen over to the double-wide dumpster, eyes gleaming as we anticipated the feast that awaited us.
 
We rats eat anything, as I mentioned, but my pal Gus does have a refined palate for what even rats like me find a bit gross. Hang around him long enough, and you’ll see why we say he puts the “Gus” in disgusting. Case in point: while I was scrounging around for some mozzarella sticks and a bit of soda bread, Gus wasted no time tackling the remnants of an O’Flannigan’s House Special: colcannon complete with potatoes, ham crisps, and eight heads of cabbage, plus broccoli, eggs (hard-boiled, of course), and beans. And of course he topped the meal off with his favorite stinky cheese, Limburger, which I think smells like feet. Really nasty feet.
 
Our hunger satiated, Gus and I strolled away from the pub … a little wobbly, since we did accidentally fall into an open Guinness keg about halfway through our meal. (Gus was disappointed when I told him I didn’t think sipping on an Irish coffee would be a good way to sober up.) As we meandered toward Gus’s home in the sewer, I couldn’t help but notice these little farting noises emanating from my ratty friend’s rear end as his hind-paws waddled back and forth. I glanced behind me to see some noxious, green fumes slowly streaming out, withering plants and causing car tires to burst as they drifted past, and silently thanked my lucky whiskers that we were facing a head wind that night!
 
I dropped Gus off at his designated sewer hole and was on the way back to my own hovel when, just a few minutes into my rove, I heard a giant BOOM! I looked back to see a huge mushroom cloud streaming from Gus’s manhole, and Gus crawling slowly to the top, flopping onto his back, and letting his huge belly bulge out, a contented and drowsy grin spreading across his whiskers. That night humans heard on their evening news many reports on the localized earthquake or explosion or freak of weather that rattled the heart of the city, but I knew, and now you know, the real reason the streets of Ratlanta shook that night.
 
If you have a night on the town planned soon (and I hope you do), I hope your evening is rat-tastic and the food is squeak-a-licious. Take heed, however, that if you go with a friend like my buddy Gus, either bring along a gas mask for yourself or some Gas-X for your pal. Besides, everyone nose that to do otherwise would be hazardous to your health!
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob

A Rat’s Remembrance

 
Today, September 11, 2010, marks the ninth anniversary of the horrible terrorist attacks perpetrated on American soil, the worst unnatural disaster in our nation’s history. And while I am normally a very jovial creature, there’s nothing funny about what happened to us nine years ago. What is amazing, however, is the strength, solidarity, and resolve with which we as Americans came together, and it is this that I’d like to remember.
 
So on this day I would like to pay tribute to those who lost their lives that fateful day, and I pray for the continuing strength, solidarity, and resolve of our nation. I would also like to thank the brave men, women, and rats (because you know there are rats on some ship or in some trench somewhere) who so bravely give their lives in service so that you and I may live in freedom. May God bless you all, and may God bless America.
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob

Rat Race

 
Labor Day weekend has come upon us, and for those of us who dwell in the Peach State, that means Race Weekend at Hamsterton, Georgia’s Ratlanta Motor Speedway. I decided it would be ratical to visit the fastest track on NASCAR’s circuit, so, after a quick trim of my lustrous black fur, I scrounged myself a ticket into the GreatClips 300 Nationwide race, held Saturday evening. (After all, NASCAR does stand for the New Atlanta Society for Cool, Adorable Rats, doesn’t it?)
 
Seeing the race track in person – or in rat, rather – was a red-rat-eye-opening experience. After grabbing myself a snack of nachos (with a double side order of cheese, of course) from the concessions, I scuttled myself down to the grandstand and secured a nestlet just to the right of the Start/Finish Line. The sound of the cars zooming around the track was no less than deafening to my sensitive rat ears: I had to plug them with my whiskers. The smell of burning rubber wafting up into the stands as the drivers peeled off Pit Road was also troubling … that is until I realized that the rubber was from tires, and not from others of my rubber rat brethren. Whew!
 
I was also taken aback at the number of fans who arrived to the race track already drunk. On any given Sunday, I imagine that if you asked them what they were doing, they’d tell you, “Watchin’ beer and drankin’ NASCAR!!!” Thankfully none of them were driving … on the track, anyway. This was evidenced by the lack of caution flags waved during the race: we saw the yellow banner appear only a handful of times, with just a single one constituting a one-car wreck by Peachtree City, Georgia homeboy Reed Sorenson. (Apparently he forgot to eat his Ruddy Red Rat Pellets, the breakfast of champions, that morning. Next time I’m sure he’ll chow down!)
 
The festivities of the event, from gathering free stuff from the vendors outside, to watching GreatClips-sponsored racer Kasey Kahne qualify as the pole-sitter, to squealing in delight as fan favorite Jamie McMurray zoomed past the universally hated Kyle Busch to squeak into Victory Lane, were rat-tastic. And although none of us set any land-speed records while exiting in that monstrous end-of-race traffic, it’s safe to say that here in the heart of the South, on that weekend in which all of us Americans take a rest from our labor, I and the other fans of NASCAR did indeed win the rat race. So until next time, keep your teeth to the cheese wheel (or is it "keep your nose to the grindstone"?), and you, too, will be a winner.
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob