Of mice and (wo)men (apologies to Steinbeck)

My continued absence might have escaped most of your attention, but it is with a certain amount of trepidation that I assert that I am still in the land of the living.

I came face to face with death last night, in the form of a baby-sized rat. (Quick update:I recently moved into new accommodation, the state of which even Jesus would weep over more bitterly than he did for Lazarus.)

So yet again, I tempted fate by laughing in the face of repeated warnings by my co-tenants, one of whom insists that he woke up to find a rat lounging on his chest, licking its chops in eager anticipation of feeding off his scrawny hallucinogen wracked body. But he does drugs so chances are quite high that he was…high.

The only advantage to this new place is that we have cable. So I am watching reruns of Macgyver (aside: that shit seems so lame now, but I am still a fan) and Knight Rider (the Hoffmeister circa 1985 WITH a very, very full head of hair! all his own too!) and I see something flash past from the corner of my eye. Ordinarily I would just let it go, but my whole being was filled with a certain sense of foreboding and dread. In slow motion frame by frame movement (Baywatchesque) I turn my head to see this huge furry dirty brown matted haired thick pink cord tailed rat charging down towards me. I screamed like a fool. And for those of you who don’t know me, I dont say this lightly. Think Stephen King meets Dean Koontz meets Friday the 13th meets Freddy Kruger. This beast was radiating evil and menace.

Now I`m hyperventilating coz this THING has decided to pull up a chair and watch TV with me. I flipped. Now I am trying to hold in the terror and I am cowering in the corner mewling and keening like a junkie denied his hit. So now the rat is eyeing me with a certain amount of contempt and disdain, like, fool please. I am only here for the Hoffmeister, I aint interested in your raggedy black I-ain’t-been-laid-in-2-weeks ass. I slowly try to edge myself out of the room, and imperiously this thing turns to me and orders me to bring it a beer from the fridge before I leave!!!! Granted this thing has been a resident longer than I have, but honestly, unless we are knocking boots, I dont do beer orders. And as fetishes go, rodents do not feature on my top ten.

Who knew that the Hoffmeister could be bad for your health? So until the trauma of my rodent visitor subsides somewhat, I will be giving TV, especially Michael Knight, a very wide berth.

P.S. The rat was real.