Dear Readers,
I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, and I wish you a merry Christmas! The short story I offer below is a stand-alone that I wrote more than a decade ago. After all these years, it still makes me laugh. May Trevor and Maggie bring a smile to your face, too, this holiday season! Safe travels, peace, and all blessings on you and your loved ones!
The night before Christmas, I only wanted to stuff myself with a feast and nest in a warm bed overnight. From my field, where I kept up a nice cozy hole in the ground, the bright lights of a nearby building beckoned like the glow from an open refrigerator door. In fact, the brick building never went dark except between about two and four o’clock in the morning. At two, the younger ladies stopped typing on their laptops–I sometimes watched the reflection of computer monitors dance across the windows–, and then at four o’clock, the soft chapel lights flamed to life, heralding the nuns’ morning chants.
My hole in the field, if I’m telling the whole truth, was cold and wet, exposed to predators, and just plain dirty. I was in the market for an upgrade in residence, and this was a welcoming prospect. Anywhere people keep hours like that had to be full of food: How else could they manage? Since it appeared to be a large house full of women, I set my girlish heart on desserts, especially chocolate. And there would be two whole hours of darkness in which a rat could filch some food, warm up, and decide whether to take up residence long-term.
Please, spare me the jokes. I’ve heard them all. Rats are a byword in the human world. “Ratting” on someone is the worst thing a child can do, and being called a “rat” is the surest sign of being from the “wrong” class of people. Well, I’m here to tell you that rats have feelings too! So, you’d better wipe that sneer off your face, or I won’t tell you my story. Thanks. Now, where was I?
Oh, yes, so I skulked my way to the building, found a gap between the bricks, and squeezed my plush-for-winter hips through. I was immediately warmer! They used water pipes for heating, so inside the walls was the warmest place you could be! I shook off the feeling of the impending storm and let myself defrost. The fine layer of snow falling outside had already melted into my fur, but I was a warm kind of wet. I didn’t want to waste time licking and primping myself when I had precious little time to follow my nose and find the food.
The sound of the water, however, caught my attention. It was too distinct, I realized, so I inspected the pipe a little closer. Coated with asbestos, we had here a cast iron pipe rusted through on the top, still sloshing water along like there was nothing wrong. Even the asbestos was gradually washing away from the top, so I could hear and see the water directly. This would not be a nice place for a rat to stay for the winter. This exact spot was on a flooding trajectory, hot or not, so, tomorrow night I would have to find someplace more permanent. After all, the last thing I needed was someone tearing down my wall or a nice boiling bath in the middle of my sleep.
It looked as though the water had risen recently. This was the first really cold night of the winter, so perhaps the heater was working extra hard. Or perhaps they had just turned it on for the first time this winter–vow of poverty and all that. In any case, that layer of asbestos on top was washing away fast.
That’s when I became aware of a certain… lack of sound from just behind me. I turned, and there he was. No, not the baby Jesus. A snake! “Ssssssssssay, there! Walk right into my mouth, why don’t you! Hahaha! Come here, sssssssssscrumptious little rat!” He slithered toward me, towering over me with his mouth wide open. As his maw fell at me, adjusting his aim to match my every dodge, I jumped back under the pipe. He chipped a fang on the cast iron. While his mouth was full of asbestos, I made my quick get-away. “Ssspew! Ssspew! Come back, little rat! I’ll get you! You can’t HIDE! This is MY house!”
Huffing and puffing, I stopped for a moment to catch my breath, certain that the snake was following silently in the darkness. Just barely audible over my air-sucking and the pounding of my pulse, I heard what sounded like someone singing karaoke at a wedding, except that I couldn’t hear the karaoke track. So it was probably…. yep, it was a drunken rat singing. I thought about it and decided that on Christmas Eve, I had to be merciful and keep drunken rats from getting eaten by snakes. I’m sure you’ve been there before. So I would warn the rat and get him to safety, preferably in the kitchen, if I could find the place. Of course, if I let the other rat carry on like this and stay right where he was, the snake would never know the difference between that rat and me. The snake would be full, and I’d be able to feast in peace then. But I chased the thought away.
I ran at the party animal so violently that I threw him back onto his hind legs, still singing. He didn’t mind one bit. He took my forepaws, called me, “Ratilda! You’re back!” and started pushing me around to the tune of “Waltzing Ratilda”.
“My name is not Ratilda, and SHUT UP!” I stage-whispered. “There’s a snake headed this way, and we’ve got to get out of here!” He kept singing but he seemed to be too tired to keep dancing because he sank down on his haunches, now only half-heartedly mumbling the lyrics. Well, I did the only thing I could do. I knocked him over and rolled him back the way he had been coming. It looked like there was a light coming from just around the corner. Hopefully, I could get my bearings from there.
It took great effort to barrel his limp, floppy body all the way to the hole in the wall—made wide for the heating pipes to enter the living space for humans. Feeling put upon and a little sorry for myself, I took a steadying breath and then scoped out the room with my nose leading my eyes. The aroma of sugar, flour, and vanilla extract slammed into my lungs on the next breath and gave me a head rush. My eyes darted to locate the source: One of the nuns scooped fresh-baked sugar cookies with green and red sprinkles–my favorite–onto a cooling rack! And that wasn’t all! The place was chock full of bulk bought food overflowing the countertops and sometimes sitting on the floor. This was definitely where my companion had found the booze. I could smell the alcohol even through that wonderful sugar haze.
I looked down to share the moment with my new companion only to discover that he was out cold, hopefully from the booze, but probably because I’d been banging his head on every rotation all the way down the corridor. What damage could a few more thumps do? I hefted him into the hole that would drop us beneath a crammed shelf full of food–plenty of cover from the nun and safely out of range of the snake, I hoped. He gave some helpful wriggles on the way through the hole, and I landed behind him. All we had to do was stay quiet and out of sight from the nun.
Holy mackerel! Evidently, the nun who did the shopping was planning to make a punch bowl full of sangria. Most of the ingredients were still in their bags inside the punch bowl on the first shelf, but the good stuff was within reach, right on the floor. My new friend had obviously taken hold of a bottle and poured out a puddle for himself. Screw-cap Merlot. Nice. He groaned in his sleep. I looked anxiously to see whether the nun had heard us, and it appeared that she was deaf. She was also cleaning up to leave soon. This is good, I thought. The cookies are served. The wine is poured. Things are looking up.
He groaned a little more, so I cupped a paw over his mouth. When he woke up, he reached for his head first. Yep, he had been more unconscious from the rolling than he was from the alcohol. My mistake.
When the nun turned off the lights and left, I still had my paw over his mouth, he was still rubbing his head, and what was left of his puddle of wine was so near, I could have turned to the right and lapped at it. I had more in mind for my feast than just wine, though, and there are always acrobatics involved in foraging. It’s a bad idea to incapacitate oneself until the best food is accessible. I found my way up a hanging hand towel to the cookies, blindly threw them to our spot, and came back down to join my friend.
He was rubbing his head with renewed vigor and glaring at me, as though I had hit him with a few of those cookies. He must have ducked out from under our shelf to keep watch for me, which was kind of sweet. He didn’t say anything about the bombing, and he somehow seemed friendly despite the glare. He was a pretty nice guy, I realized, and I was just beginning to notice how cute he was.
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Let me interject here. First of all, hi, I’m that guy who got whacked in the head with hot cookies. I don’t even like sprinkles, but I’ll take anything for you, babe. Second of all, you haven’t even told them our names yet! I’m Trevor, and the girl with the deadly arm here is Maggie. So, there we are, enjoying a picnic and getting to know one another on the best Christmas Eve that either one of us has ever had, when just down the hall we hear this shrieking. Now, we’re rats and we think we know squeaking, but this is beyond squeaking. I’m telling you, this is way into screeching territory.
It’s the nuns in the hall crying, “Water! Water! It’s everywhere!” So my dame here, she looks down at the floor, her smile goes upside down, and she says, “Oops, I think I did that.” I ask, “How?” She says, “I made a snake bite the asbestos off the side of a leaky pipe.” I want to know more obviously, but I don’t get a chance to ask, because one of the nuns comes flying into the kitchen looking for buckets and a mop. We think she sees us drinking her booze and eating her cookies, and we take off into the hole again. Babe here, she says she knows the way out, but we have to be careful because the snake is this way, too. So we’re being careful, as we wade through carcinogenic boiling water. And my head is still killing me, remember.
Well, of course we come eyeball to eyeball with the snake again. How else could this go, right? This time, instead of knocking me over and rolling me away like a butterball, she looks at me like I’m supposed to save her. Well, I love my girl, right? So I go to save her. Real knight-in-shining-armor stuff, I want you to picture it, and I was in better shape back then, too, so forget this beer belly for a minute. But just then, the nuns get hold of a sledge hammer and start taking out the wall so they can get at the leaky pipe. They hit the snake on the first try! Good shot, sisters!
Well, by now we’re swimming for our lives because the water inside the wall is rising rapidly, and there’s nothing we can do to avoid getting hit with the all-seeing sledgehammer. We have to make a choice, though. The water is running in two directions: one is going back to the kitchen, and the other is headed for the hole to the outside, where it’s quiet. Instinct demands that we get away from all that noise right now. We push, she cries a little, I help her swim, of course. We force ourselves head-first through the gap in the brick and land happily outside. Then we start freezing, because, hello, it’s snowing out here! Her “light dusting” is now a general blizzard, right? So we go off looking for another way into the building, me half-conscious, both of us half-frozen. Looks like we made the wrong choice, and we could die out here in minutes.
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Honey, you’re exaggerating. This tale gets bigger every time we tell it. And your knight-in-shining-armor move was more of a grand pause. You didn’t move until the snake was already dead.
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Gosh, it seems like your memory is a little spotty, babe. I didn’t realize how scared you were, but it seems like you’ve blanked out a bit of what happened there. That’s ok, though. I’ll always be here to take care of you.
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Sure, babe.
Anyway, I led him, dizzy and lost, through the blizzard into the same building through a different gap on the opposite side. We squeezed in, followed a similar corridor of heating pipes, and eventually made it around to the kitchen at the wall facing our puddle of booze and pile of cookies, so close and yet so far away. From underneath the sink, we were surrounded by bottles of cleaning solutions. Hungry, tired, and yet warming up, we heard banging and yelling and all kinds of carrying on for hours, right up until it was about time to serve breakfast. We had curled up together and gone to sleep by then, but we woke up to the smell of eggs and bacon and–best of all–cinnamon rolls. It was heavenly! And, not only was the chef nun deaf, but she was also blind and tended to drop food whenever she turned. We made out pretty well for breakfast once we dared to venture from our covered, safe zone.
Out in the dining hall, nuns walked through as the girls ate breakfast. Every nun decided that the wrong lights were on. They would angrily flick off some lights and switch on others before glaring around to see if anyone acted guilty. A few girls tried to keep a straight face. Others were so used to it, they barely noticed. Trevor looked at me and said, “There sure is a lot of estrogen in a place like this.” It was kind of charming though, and predictable even after a very short time. It was already starting to feel like home.
Later that morning, we overheard the plumber talking to one of the sisters about the squeaking she heard just before the pipe broke. So the nun had heard us, but she hadn’t seen us! Well, the plumber told her he didn’t know what the squeaking was, but if she heard it again, it would be better to call sooner than later. The water damage was costly. And that’s when we got the idea.
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These dames obviously needed my manly help to take care of the place, so what I and my little wife try to do is alert the nuns to problems as they come up. When we see pipes that are rusted through on the top, we listen for someone to walk by, we squeak, and then we run. That way they know where to take out the wall, and we don’t end up like the snake. Obviously, we also figured out how to take care of competing infestations, didn’t we, Mags?
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So now we’ve taken up residence in a convent/boarding house for young ladies in college. My husband here is the man of the house. We earn our food by helping to care for what’s inside the walls and by cleaning up the floors. Sometimes, we’ll even do a patch job of duct taping something if we know that the budget is too tight for replacing another pipe right now. And this year will be the best Christmas yet! We’re expecting a litter any day!
THE END
Photos by April Danchik. Used with permission. All rights reserved.
