What are you scared of?

I am basically a big wuss. I don't like creepy crawly things. I particularly don't like undomesticated creepy crawly things. I haven't yet passed this on to the kids, as Ethan has no problem whatsoever with picking up and pulling the tails off lizards, or delighting in grabbing spiders - both plastic and real - and putting them on us at inappropriate times. I don't know how he would go with a rat. Yes, we still haven't caught the stupid fat rat. However, today, being a rainy Sunday, and owing to all things rat, meant that I had a go at cleaning out a part of the study where the rat has been known to hang out.

Anth has been at me to do something about my "piles of shit" in the study for some time now. Lets say, oh, about three years. She had a pile of manila folders that I was meant to go through. Things like old bank statements and collections of pamphlets and ephemera which I am known to collect. Over the course of the day I got through about a 3ft pile of stuff, and the shredder really got a work out. She has even come in as I am writing and said "My God, My God" because the study actually is pseudo clean. You can even see the floor. She did, however, follow that up with "You've still got a pile over here..."

Part of the process of cleaning the study meant cleaning up rat droppings off the floor, along with various other dead and dusty things hidden away behind filing cabinets and stored outdated stereo equipment. I actually had an original Portable Sony CD player (the D-5) hidden away in there, from around 1985. In the process of moving a rolled up piece of cardboard, I came across our vermin.

Now, I'm not sure that it is a stupid fat rat now. I think it might be a stupid fat mouse. And maybe I'm just a stupid, but I know I shrieked like Flanders in the Simpson's episode Bart of Darkness as it ran over my leg. I chased it up the hallway, but to no avail, it had already gone.

Ciao for Now, not good at identifying species Angry Dad.