Rattled Resolutions

 
Ah, mid-January: the time at which most of us have lost the resolve of sticking to those New Year’s resolutions we set forth just half a month ago. So how are you doing on yours? Did you quit after the first day? (Did you even make one to begin with?)
 
I made some resolutions myself at the beginning of the year. So far I’m doing pretty well on the first one, keeping my whiskers clean. But I’ve got a few ratty pounds I’d like to lose, and despite taking several healthy strolls through the sewer with my fitness-crazed rat friend Slim and restricting myself to low-fat gruyere and part-skim mozzarella during mealtimes, I think the influences of my other comrat, the quite corpulent Gus, have knocked me off the hamster wheel of success. Indeed, as I glance at my sleek physique in the mirror, I see myself weighing the same amount as I weighed at the start of the month. (Should I blame this on the fact that I’m made of rubber and so am stuck with the parameters the people at the rubber-rat-making factory gave me in the first place? Or should I hunker down and stop making excuses?)
 
So while I try to renew my commitments to those weight-loss resolutions I made a few short weeks ago and look to Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse who ran up and down the clock, for inspiration, I encourage you to do the same. Here are some tips to sticking to your New Year’s resolutions:

• First, be specific. For example, say “I’m going to shed five pounds off my fur by April 1st” rather than “I want to lose weight.” Or if you aspire to learn something new (this is a popular resolution), don’t just squeak about it vaguely and treat it as if it’s an ethereal haze; go do it. For example, read a book. The best way to start: actually go to the library – today – and get a library card! Then set a specific goal: resolve to read one book every two weeks. (My personal recently discovered favorite is How to Avoid Mousetraps.)
• Second, set reasonable goals. If you set out to run an hour on the hamster wheel three times a day, every day of the week, but that wheel’s been sitting in the corner of your burrow for so long that it’s acquired an inch of dust and has become the collection spot for all of your dirty nestlet fodder, odds are you’ll scuttle to a stop before you start. Try instead to first clean off the wheel, and then praise yourself for doing at least that. After this, get some WD-40 on the hinges so you don’t squeak loud enough to wake the neighbors. Praise yourself again, and then work towards the goals you set forth in the “be specific” section.
• Third, avoid temptation. For example, if you resolve to quit smoking, refrain from snuffling around the dumpsters of mesquite-fired barbeque pit-masters’ restaurants.
• Fourth, reward yourself, but with something other than your vice. For me, that means springing for a new whisker trimmer rather than indulging in the whole-milk Parmesan I’d rather be eating. The key to this one is to make your actual reward just as appealing as your alternatively desired reward: though I do love the full-octane cheese, I equally enjoy appearing well groomed.

Perhaps the most important pieces of advice I can give you are to encourage yourself and envision success. Keep your teeth to the cheese wheel (or is that “keep your nose to the grindstone”?), and most of all – no matter if you achieve your resolutions or not – love yourself in all your rat-tastic glory.
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob

Shrew Flu

 
This past week has been a challenging one in the Rat hovel: everyone has come down with a case of Shrew Flu. You humans have your scare of the dreaded H1N1 influenza strain which attacked with particular ferocity back in 2009, and we rodents, too, have our own vicious virus to scuffle with, unfortunately.
 
It started with the octuplets. First, Harry, Barry, Larry, and Jerry brought it home after a day of scampering in the sewers with neighboring rodent pups, and soon Mary, Kerry, Sherry, and Terry were scuttling around with drippy little rice noses themselves. The dreaded Shrew then crept its way up my nosy rat whiskers, and soon all of us were laid up in our nestlets nursing fur aches and fevers, the latter compounded by the thickness of the former. My poor wife, Bobette the Mouse, has been scampering around like a chipmunk with its head cut off, doing her best to care for everyone.
 
Perhaps it’s just as well, coming on the heels of one of Ratlanta’s worst snow and ice storms, which I discussed in last week’s blog. And while I’m of the strong ratty opinion that cold weather does not cause colds (or, in this case, the Shrew), it is well known that the dryness of winter air, compounded with rodents being in such close quarters during the chilly months, produces a pertinent ratalyst for the transmission of such illnesses. And after being all cooped up throughout the storm, all of us experienced no shortage of burrow fever as the days went on. It was very difficult indeed to entertain eight very energetic pups at a seven-day stretch with nothing but a board game of Mouse Trap to occupy their ricey fancies. Consequently, when the boys were able to scamper out a couple of days ago with the initial thawing of the city, they took flying rat leaps at the chance. (Bobette was happy too: she doesn’t really care for Mouse Trap.)
 
So while Ratlanta continues to beat back the cold and we in the hovel equally battle Shrew Flu, I hope you and yours find it possible to stay healthy. Just remember to keep that air humidified, and try to get out of the burrow as much as you can.
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob

Squeaktacious Snow

 
2011 has started off with quite a squeak here in Ratlanta, as we are currently held in the icy vice grips of Old Man Winter. A powerful snow-and-ice storm swept in upon us very quickly yesterday evening, starting in as snow and then changing over to sleet and freezing rain, leaving the ground covered with a thick slick of ice. (This weather certainly gives a nip to my little rat nose!)
 
As is always the case in Ratlanta when we have inclement frigid weather, the city is completely paralyzed. It’s rather sad: the weatherman merely mentions the four-letter S word – no, not that four-letter S word … wow, your mind’s really in the gutter! (squeak “hi” to some of my friends while you’re there) – or the words “flurry” or “light dusting,” and instantly the heart of every citizen is gripped with fear and terror. Outside one can hear the great wailing and gnashing of teeth, as humans everywhere make that mad dash to the grocery store to buy milk and bread – the most perishable goods on the planet (great for keeping in a snow storm, when the power goes out and your perishables perish) – and rodents follow suit, scampering quickly to rustle up whatever scraps we can find from the dumpsters and sculleries before the streets freeze over.
 
Those of you from more northern climates, where the fur on rats grows just a little thicker, always shake your heads and roll in fits of laughter at this unwarrantably drastic behavior … and you’re right to an extent (really, is it necessary to stock up on six jugs of milk for a family of three when the snow will melt in 12 hours?) … but the truth is, humans here in the South just don’t know how to scuttle around in this mess! And sadly, the Georgia Department of Transportation is ill equipped to take care of such measures. You’d think that with an average of at least one snow event each winter for as long as the humans have recorded the weather (and it’s been longer with us rodents: just ask master prognosticator Punxsutawney Phil) that they would learn to get more de-icing trucks on the road, but no, it just never materializes in a sufficient fashion. So the city stays paralyzed – and terrified – until the snow melts, half a day later.
 
We always have cause to be worried, but this time is particularly alarming: the event, consisting of deep snows (which we define as more than that light dusting I squeaked about) plus substantial icy precipitation which will not thaw for at least the next four days, really is crippling the city. Nearly all the major freeways have been shut down in one place or another, and in less than 18 hours since the first few flurries drifted down, more than 4,500 car accidents have been reported state-wide. (Lucky for me, I don’t drive … my paws won’t reach the pedals.) So my fur’s a bit ruffled, but in four days’ time the temperature is forecast to rise into the low 50s, so the end, though distant, is in sight of my beady-red rat eyes. (It just stinks, however – like one of my pal Gus’s noxious backside emissions – that the rest of the world is crippled too, as Ratlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the largest and busiest on the planet, has canceled nearly all of its flights. Just goes to show you why we rats like to stow away on ships, and not in planes.)
 
So while the humans wait for the city to thaw (and I wait for my little rat nose to thaw as well), I will take the time to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the crystal splendor, and hope that you, too, do the same with your surroundings, be they locked in Old Man Winter’s vice grips or not. Fortunately I made my rounds of the dumpsters and sculleries in advance of the storm, so I’ve got plenty of cheese to keep me company.
 
Keepin’ it squeak,
Bob