Thursday, February 14, 2013

All the Single Ratties

 
Volentine’s Day. The one day a year when everyone seems to be in a pair bond. It doesn’t matter which corner of the sewer you scuttle to: you find yourself crouched there, just minding your own fleas-wax, while the two rats beside you keep nuzzling each other in an inappropriate PDP: public display of pawfection. All you want to do is squeak them to get a burrow.
 
It’s no secret that rats spend a lot of time coupled up. It’s also no secret that there are a lot of us out there, with just one female sewer rat capable of having as many as 150 offspring in her lifetime. By sheer numbers alone, one would assume that every rat must be bound to hook up, right?
 
Shrew that, I squeak! It’s those that scuttle solo who really get to have fun. Wanna eat in bed? There’s no one complaining about the crumbs you left in the nestlet. Care to squeak at the top of your lungs while grooming? You’ve got no mate squeaking that you’re waking the pups. No one to question why you’ve come home with the scent of another rat on you, no one to inhibit you from taking a spur-of-the-moment trip to a sewer out of town, no one to criticize your shameless cheese crumb shopping spree. No, my comrat, you have FLEADOM!!!
 
So bucks, embrace your ratchelorhood, and dames, stay true to you. Be proud to post your Muzzlebook flealationship status as single, don’t pay any rattention to FleaHarmony.com, and carpĂ© fleaem living pawtonymously. Put your paws up, all you single ratties, because on this day fleaspecially, you don’t have to worry about buying over-priced cheese balls for your lover!
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob
 
(Hey, scratch through Solo and Satisfied, written by the human who translates my rat squeaks into English, in the February 2013 issue of StudentHealth101! She appreciates all the single ratties – and the single humans, too!)

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Spelling Flea

 
“Siphonaptera.” Yeah, easy for you to squeak!
 
Spelling out the scientific word for flea, and terms like it, came easier to some more than others in the 54th-annual Squeaks National Spelling Flea, which wrapped up today. More than 5,000 rat pups from all fifty states converged on Washington, D. Flea for the occasion, bringing substantial shrieks of terror from the pawliticians on Capivole Hill. (But since most consider pawliticians to be dirty rats anyway, it was rather fleadiculous of them to raise a ruckus!)
 
True to the Spelling Flea’s biting nature, competitors were bitten repeatedly as rat after rat was culled, as if by the Pied Piper, through nine claw-biting rounds. Contenders generally performed well at squeaking the spellings of cheeses (even ones as obscure as Roquefort), but when it came to words like rodentition, and other terms pertaining to one’s uber-important incisors, many contestants were mouthwashed out. (Hmm … looks like someone will need to floss!)
 
In a contest where it’s adamant to be accurat, any ratcademic can tell you that competing is not as easy as A-B-C and 1-2-flea. No, true victors need to jump out just like the Flea they’re here to spell at. For example, just like many of you human spelling champs must be able to spell “onomatopoeia,” describing a word that sounds like what it represents, so too our champions must relay “onomatofloeia,” describing a word that bites like what it represents.
 
And so it happened: in the final round young Ratticus Smart from Boca Raton, Florida scratched the Spelling Flea into submission by correctly spelling N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, or as you may know it, DEET, the active ingredient in most insect repellants (including flea medicines!). So congratulations to him – and to all of the Spelling Flea competitors – for learning early on a concept we’d all do well to grasp: in life, there is no spellchecker!
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob

Saturday, February 2, 2013

High on the ’Hog

  
Alas, it’s here: the most famous of all rodent pawlidays, when even you humans pay homage to the greatness of our portion of the animal kingdom. Of course I’m squeaking – er, speaking – of Groundhog Day, when everyone looks to the groundhog to see if we’ll soon feel the sun kisses of spring or be locked in six more frozen weeks of winter.
 
As is widely known, Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil is the most famous weather predictor (a Prognosticator of prognosticators, as it were), but there are other groundhogs around the world that help Phil shoulder his weather-predicting burden. One of these lesser-known rodents is Phil’s twin brother, Bunxsutawney Bill. Some look at Bill with suspicion – perhaps it’s because most everyone looks at bills with suspicion – but I think Bill may be brushed aside because, in contrast to his groundhog brother, he is a woodchuck. Eh, sometimes the genes fall that way.
 
Bill, however, gives us great relief, because his talent is prognosticating the end of summer and a return to fall’s cool temperatures. Of course, summer is great – days spent lounging by the pools of water in the sewer and chomping cheesecake bites to beat the heat – but when the mercury rises as high as it did last year I’m ready to see October! So don’t woodchuck his talents away!
 
Perhaps one more thing should be squeaked – er, said: woodchucks and groundhogs are the same critter. It’s true! (As a fellow rodent, take my squeak for it.) I have it on good pawthority that Bill and Phil met in squeakrecy last night to plan their prognostication proclamation. Disseminated by computer mice early this morning, here it is for rodent and human alike:
 
Like weather, like life: not everything’s straight,
Not easy to know or anticipate.
But just as appearances aren’t always as seemed
Good things can come wrapped in ways you’ve not dreamed.
And so to ye faithful, from Phil and from Bill,
We foresee good temps, not roasting or chill
But keep you together, stay close at all times
And weather life in all sorts of its climes.
 
Happy Groundhog/Woodchuck Day,
Bob