The Rodentist

 
Ouch. It always starts with that, anyway.
 
Recently I noticed a pain in my right incisor. It started with a dull ache while chewing through drywall and progressed to the point to where I couldn’t even nibble my way through soft cheeses like brie without my whiskers whimpering wildly! It just so happens that I have an aversion to anybody in the medical field (don’t get me started on the veterinarian), but when I noticed I could no longer even smile and squeak “cheese” for pictures without howling in pain, I knew I had no choice but to visit the rodentist.
 
He was nice enough, I suppose, and as is expected of a critter in his vocation, his incisors were perfectly straight and sparkling white. I found it quite unpleasant, however, when he put his paws in my mouth and started scratching around. Every time one of his claws hit my sore tooth I squealed in agony, and was all I could do not to scuttle out of his office burrow right then and there!
 
Thankfully it didn’t take him long to make a diagnosis, and he proceeded to squeak me all about cavities and the importance of gnawing to keep my incisors trimmed. He admonished me for not brushing my teeth after eating cheesecake, and nearly laughed his whiskers off when I requested that the filling he put in be made of Parmesan. (What? It’s a hard cheese!) In the end I ended up with the standard composite resin filling and a new toothbrush to make my chompers as pearly white as those of my toothy caretaker’s. I also left with a warning: care for my teeth, the rodentist squeaked, or I’ll wind up chomping cheesecake with dentures!
 
Keepinʼ it squeak,
Bob

How Dry I Am

 
This summer the weather in my hometown of Ratlanta, Georgia has been quite fleadiculous, starting with unsqueakable heat followed by daily torrential downpours that have left me so waterlogged I’ve felt like a drowned rat. I’ve been up to my muzzle in rainwater, so last week I decided to shake the droplets off my whiskers and scuttle to someplace warm and dry.
 
Yuma, Arizona seemed like a great place to go, as it’s been noted by the Guinness Book of World Records as the sunniest place on earth. So Saturday I jumped aboard the first old Cheez-It box I found drifting under my local manhole, and floated my way from one municipal sewer system to another all the way out to the desert.
 
I arrived to conditions very dry indeed, as evidenced by the fact that, due to the sewer water having evaporated, I had to scuttle the last hundred miles on paw. When I arrived I found myself quite unprepared for another aspect of Yuma weather: I, in my haste to seek out places with low humidity levels, failed to take note of the heat! With average August temperatures in excess of 105 degrees, Yuma did more than rival that which I’d sought to escape in my hometown – it blew it out of the water! (Literally. That’s why Ratlanta is so wet: the water hasn’t been blown out yet.)
 
Sure, it was dry heat, but 105 degrees is still 105 degrees, and I was certainly way over my muzzle in what I could handle. My rubber rat fur had nearly melted off by the time I found a cactus to take shade under, and the lack of said fur, combined with the oppressively hot Yuma sun, left me with a vicious sunburn, making me a very crispy critter indeed. Thankfully I was able to chew through that cactus’s wall with my sharp incisors to reach the reservoir of water within. Swimming in it was pawsome, but steam did waft off my hot flesh as I ratty-paddled about. (S’alright: my own personal sauna!) So although I find myself once again up to my muzzle in rainwater, I’m back home now, much preferring the rains of Ratlanta to the dryness of the American Southwest! (No offense intended to my desert-dwelling kangaroo rat brethren.)
 
If you find yourself in waterlogged weather conditions this summer, do your best to shake the droplets off your own whiskers and keep splashing through those puddles, or if your blood’s a-boilin’ in the flealentless heat, borrow some incisors from a fellow rat and chew through a cactus wall. All of us can remember that, soon enough, Mother Nature will change her finicky mind, and we’ll be freezing our scaly tails off!
 
Keepinʼ it squeak,
Bob