(Not morning glories.)It wasn't that long ago that I ran into my neighbor at the Walgreens. Maybe a week at most. She warned me in her rapid, mumbled way that there were rats in the yard. Her dog had killed at least one of them. Be careful, she said.
For I don't know, about a week now, I've been noticing a decidedly putrid smell wafting about the steps where I take my bike on and off the porch, next to our neighbor's lovely weed patch. There also seemed to be more flies about the house.
Peering into the densest foliage on the unkempt plot, I tried to see where some dead animal was drawing these rats and flies, giving rise to this unwelcome olfactory experience which had come to mark my departures from the house and my arrivals back home. Couldn't see anything, and I feared to wade into their mockery of a garden uninvited.
This morning, taking out some recyclables, I happened to look at the morning glories that had sprouted up the side of the steps leading up to the back porch. I like morning glories. I hoped to see signs they had begun to twine around the banister and flower. In a way, they had another kind of present for me. Under the sun-drenched leaves of the climbing vine lay a dead rat, his head crowned in the jerky metallic thoraxes of a half dozen flies. "Ah-HA!" I think I said.
I said a little good-bye, scooped our flattened furry friend into a crate & barrel paper shopping bag, and stapled it shut. He is now labeled a size "C" rat. At least tonight is trash night.The moral for me is clear: *Possibly* in my own back yard, so check there before peering over the fence suspiciously. I don't know why I've been getting so many presentations of this lesson, but it seems like I keep getting better and better chances to learn it.
-Dr. S
