Friday 27 January 2012

Scapegoat

I pinched this photo from someone else's blog recently, but I can't remember whose, sorry. She seems to have pinched it from someone called Ellen Van Deelen, so let's give her the credit for it. I'm only posting it up because I like it so much - no hidden meanings or anything.

You may remember (or may not) that rats have a special significance in our household, and I have a drawfull of 'Rat' line-drawings, some of which I have posted up here in the past. My little (term of affection) 17 year old girl has grown up with them (as has her brother), and recently, she and a few of her friends opened the draw and spent 20 minutes or so leafing through them all, letting out cries like, "Aww!" and "I remember that one!". She thinks I ought to put them into a children's book, but some of them are utterly obscene. I suppose I would have to leave those ones out, but that would be missing out on a lot of history.

Rat came about around 20 years ago, when certain food items mysteriously went missing from our cupboard when H.I. happened to be out. She would come home and ask, "Have you eaten the last .... ?" and I would deny it, but tell her that I just caught sight of a rat creeping into the cupboard before she returned, and he took on a life of his own thereafter.

I don't think that our compact but adorable city apartment has ever had any rodents in it since it was built about 250 years ago - at least nowhere other than the basement - but something had to take the blame.

A few weeks ago, H.I. came into the kitchen and said with a sombre look on her face, "I think we've got mice."

I asked her why she thought this, and she took me to a cupboard to show me a plastic carrier bag which seemed to have been torn into shreds to make nesting material, and I took a close look at it.

The happy ending to this story is that I can now confirm that Waitrose was not lying to us when they said that their plastic bags were bio-degradable, all those years ago.


17 comments:

  1. No prizes for guessing what sort of cynical ploy this post is designed for.

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  2. Oh, all right then....

    Yes Tom, you really MUST make them into a best-selling book.

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    1. That wasn't the ploy, Cro. I was attempting to show my cute side to deflect all the negativity attracted by showing my not-so-cute side in the last few posts.

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  3. I must say that I rather like the new 'reply' option now. It saves everyone else from trawling through all the comments and referring to others before leaving one of your own - also it means you don't have to get involved in personal squabbles between elderly bloggers who really ought to know better.

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  4. I'm just testing to see if I can post a comment now and not go into a cyber loop.

    We had someone's escaped/dumped pet rat living under our bird bath a few summer's ago. He had dug tunnels and as a result the bird bath toppled over when the ground subsided. We assumed it was a pet rat as it was very cute and friendly and would come up to us looking for food. He met his end when a neighbourhood cat didn't want to be friends:(

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    1. I forgot that you make a living out of rats when I posted this, Mary Ann. Oh well, that'll teach Ratty to topple the birdbath... maybe not.

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  5. Are you telling us in a not so round about way Tom, that you were that original 'rat' that pinched the last macaroon, cream cake or whatever?
    Did you happen to see Birds' Eye View on the TV when they went to a palace in India where the Black Rat is revered and there are at least fifteen thousand running wild all over the place. I shall definitely not be going there.

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    1. What my client intended to say was....

      That Indian temple sounds like my workshop, Waver.

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  6. It's funny how the insatiable rat is used as an excuse all over the world. I once came home from work, dreaming of having a slice of the coffee cake that I had bought the day before. The ENTIRE cake was nowhere to be found. My husband mumbled something about a rat as he licked the crumbs of his lips. I'm sure he loves me, though.

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