Hell I knew it was coming, they were bound to escape…  The first rat that got out was Schnitzel, and he wound up on my sister’s head at 2 a.m.  She was pretty  cool about it, “guess what woke me up last night?” said over a cup of coffee and lot of laughter the next morning.   The second prison break happened a few weeks later at 3:20 a.m.  My partner and I were alerted by our 85 pound guard[dog].  Getting up there in both weight and age, she doesn’t make a habit of  maniacally running around the house at early hours, so we went to check on the disturbance.  The crime scene  in my son’s room was strewn with  food pellets,  paper bedding, and the top of the cage teetered on a perilous angle.  The rats were out!

Chowder was soon found frozen upright, though thankfully physically unharmed,  in a state of shock under the bookshelf (do rats get PTSD?).  I figure a giant beast with gnashing teeth will do that to you, but Mr. Schnitzel was still missing.   Call out an APB!  Our initial  fear was that “Cujo” had struck, especially since her favorite snack is baby bunnies, however  she is not a neat eater.  There would have been fur and blood evidence abound, a rat massacre to put any Tarantino movie to shame.  We’d  have to call in  a Harvey Keitel-esque”Winston the Wolfe” to do a thorough cleaning to avoid the therapy our son would  undoubtedly  need.  Luckily no bloodshed – YET.  The clock was ticking though,  and we knew  the Schnitz had to be found before the boy or the dog got to him first (those words switched around in a totally different context would sound so damn sweet!).

After hours of searching – I lie, it was really thirty minutes, return to bed, and another search after multiple cups of coffee the next morning,  I found the missing  morsel in my son’s pajama and underwear drawer (partner had long since abandoned me).  Well I found his tail, pointing straight at me between striped boxers and Lightening McQueen feetsies, and attached to the tail was a breathing, blood-fee, nose-twitching rat.   Crisis averted, at least until my next rat-venture.  Now our dog has literally become a prison guard:  sniffing around the perimeter of the cage to check that all is secure; staring unblinking when my son holds them; and trying to get a little closer each time he does.  She is biding her time to pounce, and with no Amnesty International to protect these inmates, I hope they learn to accept, if not love, Ratcatraz.