The Rat God

Carved into the post at the corner of my porch where I sit and drink and pontificate is the arcane symbol 02/17/18.  For those of you not well versed in arcanery, I will share with you the secret meaning of this profound image: It is a date, Gregorian, representing the day that I once and for all left my forlorn life on the road, remodeling restaurants and rebuilding burger joints.

Since that fateful day I have slept each night in my own much-loved room in my even more loved bunk.  Motels have beds of a very haunted nature and often are far too soft for my old carpenter’s back and many times my roommate of the moment has been stunned and disturbed to wake up in the morning to find me asleep on the floor.

Actually that never happened...I mean, yeah, in motels I usually sleep on the floor but so far in my life I have yet to encounter a roommate that wakes up before I do...ever since Air Force basic training my eyes open at five o’clock a.m. without fail.  I am awake and ready at five a.m. because, really, that’s the time when it all starts. The birds know this as do the nocturnal animals that stalk the night and also the delivery guys who have to get ice and honey buns and Budweiser to the various markets that I am known to haunt in the early hours.  Today the Budweiser guy, pushing a heavy cart and grateful for my holding open of the beer store door where I was getting my work-day ice and several packages of various flavors of salted peanuts said to me “Thank You, Sir!”

He was pumped.  He was up and rockin’ and so was I and I said to him, “No, my friend.  Thank You! You are doing very important work! Keep it up!”

It occurs to me just now that I am well paid these days and that they probably had trail mix in that store…

So, because I am a purist of sorts and because I fell, at an early age, for some claptrap from BooBoo Rum Dass about how a yogi must sleep on a hard surface and suffer or some such but maybe just because those yogis were always penniless (the real ones) and so was I, I went ahead and eschewed mattresses for most of my life and just slept on a pile of blankets.  These days my bunk is a 6x8 piece of plywood cushioned with a double thickness of sleeping pads courtesy of REI and a three-ply stack of heavy blankets from the Goodwill. It works for me and the only thing more haunted than a motel bed is a motel floor and so, ever since February I have been very happy and grateful to crash, every night, in my own room and in my own bed.

(Note:  What the hell is a claptrap and why would anybody want to catch some?)

Also, after a devastating rat invasion two years ago (or was it three years ago?) I was forced to research everything I could find on the Web about rats and how to get rid of them.  The little bastards would wait each night until I was passed out (nocturnal) (the rats, not me) and then come out and gambol about and look for beer drippings or a stray piece of the popcorn or frozen pizza I would invariably have had for dinner. Failing this, they would return to their maze of rat paths in my ceiling and stomp around up there, trying to wake me up so maybe I would pop some more Redenbacher’s.  The Blonde, my long-suffering female companion, had retreated once again to her daughter’s condo.

But I, empowered by Wiki, was not daunted and after a few night’s research, with little whiskered rodents looking over my shoulder, got it sorted out.  Habitat, food and water were all they were after and I was not their enemy, they figured that if I was going to put out a banquet of raw peanuts for the squirrels every day (diurnal) then there must be, by pure rat logic, some kind of feast waiting for the night crew. Plus, if I didn't like them, why would I provide them with a warm and cozy rat home in the ceiling?

Then, one evil morning, blanketed in the desperate gloom of a professional-level hangover and needing some serious bathroom time, I was saddened to find a teenage suicide in the toilet, some poor little rat cut off too early in life while trying to get a simple drink of water.

That led to the fairly gruesome task of ripping out all the old and deteriorating ceiling and moldy  insulation in my thirty year old mobile home. In the process, I was dazzled by their network in the ceiling.  In each corner was a nest (hey! There’s my missing sock!) with straight tunnels through the insulation on diagonals that intersected in the middle of my room, right over the ceiling light.  There were obvious ingress and egress points, perfectly round, leading to the outside world. I guess that is where they all went when I fired up the sawzall.

A day later all the debris was in the trailer park dumpster.  I paid eleven dollars for some lightweight roof flashing and got out my trusty rivet gun and tin snips.  All those holes got covered and riveted down and then, at the insistence of Blondie, her half of the trailer got new insulation and a new plywood ceiling.  I left my half open to the bare tin roof. The cheap-ass trailer trusses, exposed now, give my room and my bunk and my writing table a very Captain’s-cabin feel and at night, when I rouse momentarily from some wanton dream, I look around and I thank the Rat God for forcing me to create a special place that I might not have achieved left to my own devices.

Having destroyed their habitat, by putting lids on the dog food bowls and closing the toilet seat religously, my rat problem was solved. My home was once again my own and the Blonde, looking warily about, moved back into our little trailer.

And yet, now, hear my lament: for once in my life home all the time and happy and doing lucrative work that I enjoy, The Call has come again. Remarkably coinciding with a financial downturn at the condo project where I have been toiling and daydreaming since March and maybe due to a little avarice on my part, Corporate is cutting off my cash flow and at the same time, just today, one of the gazillionaire contractors from my piratical past called and wanted to know if I wanted to lend a hand at a place called Mexico Beach.  

Hear the laughter of the vengeful Rat God!

Whispering Pines Trailer Park

October 13 2018