So here it is Jan. 7 and we already have a contender for the most bizarre story of the year. Maybe you saw it the other morning. It was headlined “Large African Gambian rats have Keys officials worried.”
This should be one heck of a new year if we’re starting it like this.
It was really the subhead that caught my attention: “Rats that can grow as big as a raccoon could threaten other species …”
What? Big as raccoons? Now that’s what I call a rat.
The African Gambian pouch rat. And officials down there are worried the needle-nose critters could decimate local wildlife and run off tourists. Tourists will swim with barracuda, but mention a rat and they’re off to the other coast.
What a great story. When I was a reporter it was the kind of piece I literally begged for. Something that is filled with color and total absurdity — that draws all kinds of great imagery in a reader’s head.
Like how it mentioned pouch rats are so big they don’t have any natural predators. Cats won’t go near them. It cites a woman who went outside one night to investigate a loud shrieking noise only two find two pouch rats fighting, maybe over a girl named Judy or some pizza crust. Then, and here’s the kicker, what’s watching the whole thing but two cats.
In my mind I hear one cat lean over to the other and whisper, “Jeez, the neighborhood’s really going downhill in a hurry.”
The story also said experts fear that the pouch rats could spread to the mainland and the Everglades (where they might start wrestling alligators). These experts weren’t too worried they could walk the distance, maybe because these are generally lazy animals and don’t wear the kind of comfortable shoes needed for such a long trek.
“But they could get in the back of a truck and make it that way,” one person actually said. This just had me in stitches and again my mind was all a flutter.
See, I always picture animals as stars of action movies or in Broadway musicals. Two pouch rats fighting? I see “Westside Story.”
“When you’re a pouch rat, as big as a coon, you revel your fat, and the ladies all swoon.”
Pouch rats in a truck? I picture them with tattoos, wearing vests and leather jackets hiding out in a gas station parking lot until the perfect truck with a tarp over the bed pulls up. There it is! After a quick fight over a peanut, the leader, Eddie, prince of the pouch rats, yells out, “Load ‘em up, boys. We’re headed for the big city.” The pouch rats clamber in and I see them with their little pouch rat arms hanging over the side while passing around a pack of cigarettes. Every couple of miles a fight breaks out.
“When you’re a pouch rat …”
This is the kind of stuff I think about when I’m up early in the morning.
I did some research on pouch rats, and I found out they’re called “pouch” because they stuff things in their cheeks. I don’t know if that’s food or lug nuts, but they look ridiculous.
And they’re actually considered an exotic pet, which simply means there are people out there who like the idea of a rat curling up with them at night.
An MSNBC story I found on pouch rats quoted an owner who called them wonderful companions, despite the fact that they eat furniture and tear up the carpets if left alone for more than a second. Oh yes, and the story said they’re also believed to be responsible for bringing monkeypox into the U.S.
Not to mention they would fight an entire biker bar … if they could only find a truck with a tarp to get them out of the Keys.